and now there's another reason why it might seem like you went back in time to be eighteen hundreds while in the grand canyon state good old fashioned coney and discrimination so yesterday the arizona state legislature just passed a law allowing business owners to refuse service to gays and lesbians in the equal pay to females withhold birth control for unmarried women and skirt legal contractual obligations only name a religion yes that's right this wide ranging to korea laus individuals to skirt federal and state anti-discrimination laws that the reason for doing so is on account of religious beliefs arizona governor jan brewer has yet to decide if she will approve or veto the law and similar legislation scuse me has also been brought up in states like idaho tennessee south dakota and kansas but none of those bills have actually passed state legislatures and as such arizona is poised to become the first state in the twenty first century to codify discrimination on such a large scale and tovar the state democratic minority leader even went as far as

saying that quote many arizona will find themselves members of a separate and unequal class under the law because of their sexual orientation this bill may also open the door to discriminate based on race familial status religion sex national origin age or disability but i guess we should expect this kind of medieval legislation from a state that has repeatedly had its laws overturned by the supreme court back in june the court struck down the requirement that said arizona had to provide proof of citizenship in the form of a birth certificate passport or another government id in order to register for federal elections despite the fact that no federal voting forms have this obligation the entire purpose of the law was to suppress minority votes according the a.c.l.u. in two thousand and eleven more than twenty one million americans or eleven percent of the total population did not have government issued i.d.'s including twenty five percent of blacks versus eight percent of whites furthermore a study by the civil rights group advancement project found as many as ten. million

hispanics across the nation were affected by these laws during the two thousand and twelve election and all that were scary about voter fraud but the arizona republic combed through the voting records in phoenix and found that since two thousand and four there's been a whopping total of thirty four cases of fraud and only two of those cases involve undocumented citizens you also might remember about one of the photo zina phobic leadership of governor brewer arizona approved the most extreme immigration bill in the nation in two thousand and ten the law requires that every immigrant have their alien registration cards on them at all times and allowed police to stop and question people merely if they had a reasonable suspicion that the individual was an undocumented immigrant because unfortunately people don't tend to wear i'm an illegal immigrant name tags on their shirts so he can never be too sure now thankfully most of the law was struck down by the supreme court in two thousand and twelve but codified racial profiling when it comes to weeding out. still. in the show me your papers state believe it or not

and even less veiled racist law was also passed in the state in two thousand and ten the law prohibited the teaching of mexican american studies in the city of tucson so the curriculum was all about scary subjects like mexican american literature multiculturalism and critical thinking but despite the fact that the program led to increased graduation rates high student achievement and was even recommended for an expansion after an independent state audit it just wasn't white enough for conservative lawmakers and judges in fact last march a judge up held that the ban on mexican american studies was indeed constitutional in a state that used to be mexico but since then the tucson school district has revived the program but only due to a federal court order mandating it so i guess arizona's new discrimination law is just a natural progression of what happens when sexual orientation and race intolerance is continually promoted by state government as sound. legal policy because after

all the arizona's tourism board wants visitors to experience that old eighteen hundreds wild west feeling it's got to be authentic. earlier this week yet another banker died in the alleged suicide this time in hong kong thirty three year old lady has become the eighth banker to join a list of deaths within the financial sector since late january. is the third j.p. morgan employee to commit suicide in recent weeks raising questions over what is leading the string of high profile debts but should these deaths be looked at in a vacuum or are they symptomatic of a cut throat industry that thrives on pressure stress and results of our two financial show boom bust airdate showed that it was. understood that thrives on

stress pressure and i. definitely believe me all those same symptoms here i call us the the end pats and i call the wall street the sociopath there i was at the same spectrum very high stress environments we care too much they care too little it's a big problem when you marry one. parent you know you you have ties to wall street you know you know a lot of wall street bankers what is the root to this you know i mean it's a really good question i don't think it's just one thing i think it's a variety of things i think that you know bankers they go in glamorizing this idea and folks like wolf of wall street and boiler room and even michael lewis's liar's poker which is kind of like the gospel that led a lot of these people from these eyes of the institutions to wall street they expect so much and then they get there and particularly as lowly analyst they're not getting paid what they thought and yes they're getting paid a tremendous amount of money and you should have little sympathy for that but when you when you're expecting so much and you have glamorized anything whether it be your wedding all. for your new puppy you're going to be let down right i mean these

people are looked at as dollar signs i mean their whole expectation is to surpass their prior year profit i know they are constantly trying there's pressure on them to maximize their bottom line if they don't do that they're looked at as what's your what greater role here why are you doing that yes you know going back to wolf of wall street i mean even though people have said that it's a little bit sensationalist is it really i feel like it's very indicative of the pressure put on the industry sex drugs gambling i have to say i do know a lot of people in the financial services industry and i do think that yes jordan belfort was a real guy and yes he did all of that but i don't think that everyone is like that i think a lot a lot of people today what they're jumping off of buildings but here's the thing you know we were talking about this earlier. before people have and that's reported extensively relative to how many suicides are committed that's a big deal but it is a little sensationalized i will fairly say that however yeah it does it does drive it's driven industry with guys need to be the biggest baddest toughest

a ton of athletes out of college go into banking it is a fosters that type personality you bring up a really good point which is that we're seeing all these bankers suicides and we're saying oh what's going on in radio giant conspiracy they have to be you know is there another impending financial collapse that they know about that we don't and really there's thousands of people that commit suicide every day they don't they're not millionaires so they don't get the headlines really everyone is a human being we all need resources we need to help if we need it and in this industry i just feel like you have alpha males the pressure is on you can't seek out help i mean you're considered weak in the industry if you try to say like hey you know i'm depressed i'm sorry sidled if you like a lot of you know you're not you're not going to jonathan all right the position and what's even sadder though is that you know there's a lot of industries like ours where you are a long hard hours and you are compensated like a banker or but think of a doctor who has worked all night but he might save someone here she and they might get a thank you they might not. but they might get a thank you. they're bankers they have about an average about twenty percent now

here's this is actually a real stat here we have here bankers only do about a deal to or two dots in a quarter that ever closes tops a deal to two if you close three deals and one quarter you are rocking it like no one else so imagine spending your time in your energy all day every day on a project that you know full well will never come to fruition after a while yeah your bombed out and that dollar sign if you're getting paid in restricted stock not the cash flush ways that it was in the eighty's and the wall for wolf of wall street is here to make bombs or even though it's a point and you know i think the culture you know here we have a country that's run by a corporatocracy that's essentially run on the financial looting the pressure isn't necessarily on these c.e.o.'s are going to get bailed out i mean it's a total joke it's put on the p.r. and. a lot of pressure and really you know as well as i do living in d.c. your job is your identity yes it makes up who you were just like you know it's just not done by me to a lot of people you meet people to bar their like what do you do and then if you if

their eyes just glaze over it's like oh you can't help me financially or politically that you know i mean it really is a house of cards and consideration and really like i think the stakes are so high that these people feel like they're losing their job or their identity i mean what else they have to go on exactly i knew it gets to another point that bankers a lot of the time and this is this is coming from a banker that i love my husband who says that it's hard sitting at a table sometimes and people ask what do you do and you say you're in finance and the whole table is kind of revolt and while he kind of turned it. down firmly behind the back of the matter is that's not going to make you feel great and i think that that's there's a lot of that going on. in the financial services industry and you know that's such a good point as you're because your husband's so awesome he's so and he's so great he clearly has empathy and it brings me back to this study that i was reading psychology today that one out of every twenty five normal people are sociopaths and that's sort of normal normal and then according to see if a magazine one of ten people on wall street. eight are sociopaths i mean this is

lack of empathy no regard for consequences unbridled risk taking i mean that if that isn't a hundred wall street c.e.o. that i don't really know if it's anything about your team and about you ceo's if you're not a sociopath like your husband this could be a really depressing job where you're thinking what the hell what is going on i mean if you know what i contributing to all these things it can really it can really get you and i doubt that every single person on there is a sociopath even those as much as i need to take that one out tonight by itself and to generalize all of also but i mean really you know i think that there's all this pressure and when your boss you're when you're reporting to a psychopath and you are not one exactly my dad are very hard to communicate sociopathy shoeless crazy but still crazy so you know what what is it about the financial system that just breeds this and what can be done to stop it and i mean honestly i think it's a lot of it is it's testosterone driven industry for sure so what can be done to stop it they're trying to take steps now you know a lot of banks have said that you know we can have in terms working twenty hour

days and we've got to give them at least one tail weekend off i mean it's a step it's a step in the right direction make no mistake that they won't get paid the same amount as they went i think at least it's a step in i mean it's not for everyone that's for sure at the end of the day we're all humans we all need help resources no matter what job you're working out and you know suicide's a real serious matter thank you for coming on shed any light on it and you thank you you guys coming up a shine a light on the world of shadow lobbying state to. dramas the truth be ignored. stories of the risk used in the. sixty's change the world right. to picture.

from roads to. drop please don't. and russia trees being gay is not criminalised there absolutely no punishment for being gay in russia the only thing that these small occludes is grabbing for information family intermission on nontraditional sexual behavior what are you going to legislate against couples who swing you know who. you know trade partners or is it only a certain type of sex that you're legally able to you know it is so why is propaganda you know it's so unclear. you know there's a new game in town it's called the hunger games housing games

plus ungar games equals games while a user on my website named andy parry coined the phrase it was david cameron who invented the brutal game in which there are no housing games without hunger games.

the. washington d.c. is one of the most expensive cities in america and if you look at all the business suits walking between k. street and capitol hill you think that the city is practically recession proof

which might have something to do with the high concentration of lobbyists and billions of lobby dollars that are peddled to the city every year have record of the watchdog website open secrets dot org for the third year in a row overall spending on lobbying has actually decreased to three point two billion dollars along with the official number of registered lobbyists in just over twelve thousand and rational lobbying experts however argue that lobbying isn't decreasing at all and instead it's simply going underground or earlier i spoke to investigative journalist for the nation lee phone who just published an article called where have all the lobbyists gone and he takes a closer look at what's been coined the shadow lobbying complex i first asked him why the numbers posed on open secrets don't reveal the full story. well the numbers you are seeing are holding secret which is a fantastic web site reflect the. official lobby registration system that's maintained by the house and senate the problem is just the statute the lobby

disclosure act is riddled with loopholes. there are many ways for lobbyists to evade the low and simply put. there are many incentives for lobbyists to register and the law does not cover all lobbying activity so the real figure on how many lobbyists are and you see that are actually attempting to influence policy is closer to a. hundred thousand not twelve thousand and experts say of the amount spent is not three billion but closer to maybe six nine or even ten billion unbelievable and you're talking about all these loopholes in the lobbying disclosure act named after former senate majority leader tom daschle will why is he the face of an registered lobbyists. well senator tom daschle all left the senate joined a private equity also joined a law and lobbying firm alston and bird is now another one called d.l.a.

piper he's become the face of the problem because everyone knows that tom daschle will lobby use that he meets with government officials that he meets with president obama that he coordinates meetings with legislators with policy folks and businesses from health care and energy to other sectors and he does this openly. and at the same time it does not register so given his prominence in washington d.c. you know helping president obama with this health care overhaul. associated with many different think tanks that are constantly in the news and is it different functions in the city he does all this while flouting the law you know one of the most damning things about the article is that connection to the plan to have retailers like gap skirt around responsibility for the bangladesh and garment factory collapse that killed more than a thousand people the i was wonder if you get a lot on that connection. sure well we go through many different anecdotes but this

is one of the more tragic ones of how our own registered lobbyist peddled in florence and the public and the press is completely kept in the dark about who the real paymasters are so for this example if you look at the last last year last summer when. asked in the aftermath of the latest major building. aps in bangladesh many european retailers offered a very strong player to increase of building inspections to make sure that garment manufacturers. or the retailers that pay the garment manufacturers are liable for these types of disasters well american companies like gap and wal-mart and j.c. penney did not like. any of these reforms they wanted to counter them they didn't want to pay for any of these necessary upgrades or be liable for future disasters

so they had d.l.a. piper dash was firm and go out and sell an alternative plan but it does not keep them on the hook for any future liabilities saving them a lot of money but potentially causing more death and pain in the future so what's interesting here is as d.l.a. piper lawyers and officials went around the city selling this alternative week labor clare no one knew that they were being paid by gap one of the big companies that refused to play ball. that's just another example of of the shadow lobbying complex that you have folks selling policies selling influence and affecting the way that these policies are acted without registering and without disclosing if you listen to their rhetoric or when they're walking around the city selling this plan they said that they are with based they are affiliated with think tanks or they are

you know simply former government officials no one knew who was really behind this plan simply because they did register yeah and you give the series a dozens of examples here i mean this is just one of the go the layers and layers and layers as you're talking about right now is there a way to investigate as i mentioned the house ethics committee overseeing the process of following up with those who are unregistered and still participating and lobbying. that ukraine. question and this was actually the most surprising part of reporting the story i've covered lobbying and influence peddling for about five years now and i did not know that the enforcement mechanism to the lobbying disclosure act of basically has no cop on the beat there's never been a criminal important case brought ever there have been virtually no civil cases either and that's because the only people owe overseeing this process of making sure people register and comply with the law there's only one full time employee at

the department of justice that's a contract paralegal who basically just processes them forms some other kind of file keepers and connor's also look into this but if you simply don't register and you continue influence peddling there's. there's no unfortunate matters which is to go after folks. and i guess you know the answer probably lobbyist is don't register it you know we another thing the article you point out is the rebranding efforts on behalf of the lobby minister can you give some examples of these and how renaming institutions have changed their perceived role. i think if you look at public polling americans are incredibly upset about the role of big money in politics the way lobbyists have taken control of the political process has really taken control of both political parties and to kind of combat growing cynicism whether from occupy or the tea party rather than changing their behavior or

complying better with the law lobbyist areas stead simply changing their image changing their names of their titles so for example the american league of lobbyists a professional association for lobbyists in november changed their name to the government affairs associates or government affairs professionals so meant so much more vanilla day to take the l. word out of it they don't want to be called a lobbyist they call themselves other euphemisms like public affairs associates or government affairs government as government relations that type of thing you know i want to point to just one thing tank here in d.c. the employment policies institute sounds very innocuous a widely quoted economic research center pushing the notion that increasing the minimum wage would increase poverty and it's backed by the national restaurant association leave you the polarization of the issues in this country can be blamed on ideological front groups backed by massive lobbying efforts. and i think you hit the nail on the head there you know

a lot of the political debates we see on television in the media are not much more than political theater propped up by characters who are saying what they're saying or pushing a certain policy because sometimes paying them then you don't know who they are they'll say oh this is. to help the democrats or to help the republicans but in many cases they're pushing a very narrow corporate interest without revealing who their true paymasters are how much of legislation would you say is written by lobbyist i remember doing an investigation into just california state legislature it was like i think sixty percent this is a couple of years ago i was just worried if you had any insight on the federal level here. we don't count for here you know for all of its flaws and as you know i'm a first transplant to the state it's very corrupt but at least you have a system of showing who sponsors bills act when stricker meadow in washington and i just finished a reporting trip in idaho and the lobbyist actually wear name i.d.

so there's a lot of problems and i know but there's certain elements of transparency in congress there are no such standards why vs right bills every day there they are sponsoring legislation but there's no system to keep tabs on that. you know your mention before of course open secrets next on the website even they aren't tracking the dark money it takes something like you and very in-depth investigation how do we follow this i mean what do we do to follow this trend here. that's a good question oh well i just really want to project this is a self-help book to get that out last last week i relaunch to blog republic report dot org and there are many reporters who are following the money trail trying to uncover these types of stories but i have to say it's very typical because so much of the system has been pushed into the darkness it's purposefully secret and in some cases you know for this story. i reported yesterday you only

stumble into it you know the opening and go to that story of finding former congressman lobbying for palin's here i just overheard him bragging about it on capitol hill just dumble into it sometimes yeah that's what i love out here i mean . are very natural you're there on capitol trying to figure out what's going on and you saw firsthand kind of the healings and dealings of all these people you know i was speaking to jack up the other day and he said that citizens united didn't actually make it easier for a lobbyist cause they'll all ways find a way to get around it what do you think we do think citizens united exacerbated this problem. while it's i'm i'm of two minds on them so this is united and obvious for one thing it makes raising money for a politician easier instead of having to be on the phones for sometimes eight hours a day for some of these politicians begging people for these thirty thousand five thousand dollars checks you can just find one sponsor someone to sue bring in

a super pac they can dump a million dollars into your district that makes it much easier to sort of who isn't it's not a lot of counterintuitive take at the same time it makes corruption much worse because if a chemical industry lobbyist wants to pressure a senator or congressman all they have to do now is set up a front group and funnel corporate money into that front group. unlimited amounts of money and very easy to pressure a lawmaker when the corruption is that simple in the koch brothers of course have mastered the how do we stop this toxic cycle leave because of course in order to play the game you gotta have a lobby on the hill now. and you know x. talk to a lot of. campaign finance experts folks who are interested in good government and there's a consensus that we need better laws and i don't disagree with that necessarily but we also need. a force mix so there's no political will a source is devoted to investigating federal corruption i think that we i think

citizens need to demand that type of enforcement because there are laws on the books they simply aren't just being they are being enforced thank you so much excellent work leave journalist contributor at the nation really prepared time thank you so much abbie. that's our show you guys thanks for watching join me again next week without a break to start all over again. no cholesterol pianist's depression.

the efforts to work. to improve your life. are you see. form those that's. something you. choose your language. we could know if they still some of. the consensus get to. choose the opinions that invigorating to. choose the stories that in life choose the access to. siler. child will rights.

to the. pain of the young girls cammo for the future han are. between two and three hundred million guns the united states so you can act like they're not here and keep kids away from them. the pass' out is they won you know i mean this teaches them a lot of are a responsibility and simply come to pay through the eyes of children if we can't do it for our children for our future. going to extremes all across europe rightly and to e.u. parties and groups are gaining strength and in some cases respectability what accounts for this hard economic times are the growing alienation and frustration

with the euro project could it be said the new right is really the only bright spot wintering a nice suit. ukraine's former prime minister and opus ition figure head unit to machine code arrives in the capital saying she will run for president to parliament votes to free her from jail and dismiss the head of state. which condemns what he calls a coup in kiev and defines calls to step down is now in the east of the country where local authorities say that taking full control of the region's. european media is that help to broker a crisis deal for ukraine say they will support the new government what admitting the opposition has violated the agreement.