international the ukrainian parliament votes to depose president. refuses to step down saying the opposition is attempting a state. protesters in kiev. meanwhile. from the east hold an emergency meeting to take control of their regions claiming. constitutional. mediators that. ukraine say they will support the new government while admitting the opposition has violated the agreement. more news coming your way in an hour's time but coming up next it's breaking the. this is our international

stay with us. what is going on everyone i'm abby martin and this is breaking in. to me the feeling that a regular old cuppa joe just isn't enough to keep you up anymore well the pentagon has a new solution that it's planning to try it on american soldiers and i know i say this a lot but the latest development is literally shocking because they're planning to zap their brains with electricity that's right the pentagon has already begun to experiment with this new shock therapy which it says could keep the u.s. military's digital warriors and drone operators more alert the air force army and darpa are all participating in five separate studies with a price tag of two hundred grand a pop this government already relies on a videogame methods to kill so it's turning soldiers in electrical conductors really the future of warfare i guess it's time we update that slogan part of waking

up is an electric shock to the dome and let's break the set. the. it was a. very hard to take a. look. at her how to act without her there. when it comes to natural beauty arizona has it all traveling around the state like

sites like monument valley the painted desert the petrified forest all make you feel like in one thousand nine hundred cowboy 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 go fashion draconian discrimination so yesterday the arizona state legislature just passed a law allowing business owners to refuse service to gays and lesbians the naeyc will 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 decree allows individuals to skirt federal and state anti-discrimination laws if 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. 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 breakfast or for federal elections despite the fact that no federal voting forms have this obligation the entire purpose of the law is the 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 in a stereo about voter fraud 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 required 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 where i'm an illegal immigrant name tags on their shirts so he can never be too sure now thankfully most of this law was struck

down by the supreme court in two thousand and twelve but codified racial profiling when it comes to. now. still a ok in the show me your papers state but 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 quite 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 for arizona 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 lodge 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 june jay is the third at 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 debts be looked at in a vacuum or are they symptomatic of a cut throat industry that thrives on pressure stress and results are too financial

show boom bust and aid joining us. i understand that thrives on stress pressure and i. definitely believe me all those same symptoms here i call us the the and 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 their 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 audience 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 go in glamorizing and cliques like wolf of wall street and boiler room and even michael lewis's liar's poker which is kind of like the gospel that let a lot of these people from these 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 or 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 on their cause they try and 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 no other impending financial collapse that they know about that we don't and really there's thousands of people who 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 with 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. get on your lettuce job i didn't write 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 their 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 in the wall for wolf of wall street is you're doing bomb didn't even know 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 booty and 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. you know it's just not fun but i mean i'm sure a lot of people you meet people who are there 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 do 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 are you doing 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 are sociopaths i mean this is a lack of empathy no regard for consequences unbridled risk taking i mean what if that isn't a hundred wall street c.e.o. that i don't know anything about your team and about you so you know if you're not a sociopath like your husband this could be a really depressing job where you're thinking what the hell is going on i mean you know what i contributing to all these things you 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 the not to. generalize all of all 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 friend are very hard to communicate. but still crazy. 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 the. now you know a lot of banks have said that you know we can have interns working twenty hour days and we've got to give them at least one tail we got 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 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 at 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 lobby and say to. the

transit route to vnukovo report you'll best way to the heart of mosco. cholesterol . depression. to prove you and why. are you. one of those that. feel. so.

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 recorded 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 increasing 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. flow the numbers you are seeing are holding secret which is a fantastic web site reflect the. official lobby registration system best 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 law 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 actively attempting to influence policy is closer to a hundred thousand not twelve thousand and it 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 unregistered lobbyists. well senator tom daschle will left the senate joined a private equity firm 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 he 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 then and it is a 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 could elaborate on that connection. sure we go through many different anecdotes but this is one of the more tragic ones of how under registered lobbyist paddle 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 collapse in bangladesh many european

retailers offered a very strong claim to it of building inspections to make sure that garment manufacturers. are the very top. that paid to garbage 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 that 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 the deal a piper lawyers and officials went around the city selling this alternative weak labor plan no one knew that they were being paid by jack 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 policy 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 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 goes the layers and layers and layers as you're talking about right now is there way to investigate as i mentioned the house ethics committee overseeing the process of following up with those who are unregistered and still participating in lobbying. but your great 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 the. basically has no cop on the beat there's never been a criminal important case of brar 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 congress also look into this but if you simply don't register and you continue influence peddling there's. there's no important matters which is to go after folks. and i guess we know the answer probably lobbyist and don't register at you know we another thing the article you point out is the rebranding efforts on

behalf of the lobby ministry 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 and really taken control of both political parties and to kind of combat this growing cynicism whether from occupy or the tea party rather than changing their behavior or complying better with the law lobbyists are instead simply changing their image changing their names of their titles so for example the american legal lobbyist a professional association for lobbyists in november changed their name to the government affairs associates to our government affairs professionals so meant so much more vanilla name to take the l. word out of it they don't want to be called 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 this one thing tank here in d.c. the employment policies institute sounds very innocuous to widely. economic research center pushing the notion that increasing the minimum wage would increase poverty and it's backed by the national restaurant association lead 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. or your california you know for all of its flaws it has you know i mean first transplants the state it's very corrupt but at least you have a system of showing who sponsors bills for meto washington and i just finished a reporting trip in idaho and the lobbyist actually where you name i.d. so there's a lot of problems that i know but there's certain elements of transparency in congress there are no such standards why do you strike those every day there they are sponsoring legislation but there's 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 watch project is a self-help book that put out last week i relaunch to blog. public 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 open ended go to that story of finding former congressman lobbying for the palin tear i just overheard him bragging about it on capitol hill just amble into it sometimes yeah that's what i love out here i mean you're 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 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 lee do you think citizens united exacerbated this problem. while it i'm of two minds on them so this is united and were obvious for one thing it makes raising money for on a politician easier instead of having to be on the phone. 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 a sponsor someone to to 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 kind of a 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 only because of course in order to

play the game yeah got to have a lobby on the hill now. and you know it's 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 that so there's no calendrical will at the department of justice and there's no resources 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 are just being they are being reinforced thank you so much excellent work leaf on journalist contributor at the nation really push airtime thank you so much abbi. that's our show you guys thanks for watching join me again next week when outbreak the sat all over again.

i know c.n.n. the m s n b c news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's closer to the truth and i think. it's because one politician and the mainstream media works side by side with joe actually i'm here. to tell you that. at our team news we have to print right. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not god. i don't know if. you guys talk to the jokes i will handle them in the

sense that i've got a. i think you know. a pleasure to have you with us today. rather than invent a new powerful remedy. for the real ills that plague humanity. like cancer and hypertension.