double the national average harris's house there is about double the size of the one in harvey strangely the address for the family nice house is the one he used when he first ran for senate on the federal level in two thousand and eleven he used the fancy address birth his own voter registration the fancy address is the one on his driver's license and a woman who looked exactly like his wife answered the door at the fancy address when a reporter went to check that house out but she didn't want to answer many questions in other words all evidence points to senator harris living outside of the district he represents a clear violation of his state's constitution all the evidence points to the fact that he'd rather live in a posh house away from the poor people he's supposed to represent which sucks there's a reason for our representatives to live in the same place as the people they're supposed to represent and that's how they're supposed to know what their constituents most want and need it from their government but senator harris like

most of our politicians would prefer to live in a nice rich bubble they like to put out a front of being in touch with their constituents when meanwhile that's just an outright lie and in this case it's an outright unconstitutional lie tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter as the rest of. your friends post a photo from of attrition you can't. call it different. the boss repeats the same old joke of course your. next girlfriend stupid's tear jerking poetry. nora's.

we post only what really matters to you to your facebook u. street. below and welcome across the uk for all things considered i'm peter lavelle divisions within ukraine are becoming greater with each passing day the western backed regime in cave shows no interest in compromise or negotiations at the same time civilians in the east continue to die care of is going for broke. cost of the crisis in ukraine i'm joined by my guest michael shank in washington he's an associate director at the friends committee on national legislation in

berlin we have men well oxen writer he's a journalist editor and reporter and in moscow we cross to ben heiress he's the editor in chief of business new europe or a gentleman cross-talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it man if i go to you first here in moscow the ukrainian president can't seem to take the answer yes over the last few weeks and months they've been overtures coming from russia to do deescalate the situation in eastern ukraine to stop the violence and at the same time russia's gas promise offered ukraine the same price for gas that it did for unocal which and they're still saying no to what's going on. well it does seem that the russians now come to the table and started to negotiate and itself is a massive step forward i mean they named a concrete price with concrete conditions that is less than the four hundred fifty four hundred eighty dollars per thousand cubic meters that they've been talking about one hundred dollars less and if the ukrainians now turn around and said yes

then a deal would be struck and the whole gas thing would be over power from the fact that ukrainians were still struggling to pay their gas bills because the country is on its knees economically and the fact that the two sides in actually sasa the table and haggling for the first time over concrete practical questions of price is a huge positive however you know the ukrainians are playing hardball and to be honest they have an extremely weak negotiating position because they're still pounds in theory but i think the price of signing the contract in two thousand and nine which would leave them with this four hundred dollars plus cost of us. but the fact that the russians are trying to compromise looks like they're looking for a way out of this which which i'm very pleased to hear that ok michael in a way out of this is actually should make you the europeans a lot happier too because ukraine is in the middle of all of this here i mean why isn't the regime in care of more open to negotiations because on a number of occasions putin said that he thought the referendum in the east wasn't

a good idea when. the foreign minister said that if you know ukraine signs an association agreement with the european union russia want sanctions ukraine i mean we keep hearing this over and over again but the ukrainians keep saying no. well my guess for and i think ben's right ukraine's on its knees economically as i've said before publicly and c.n.n. with former congressman russ carnahan the way to go forward on gas is actually to diminish or decrease our reliance on gas or oil i know the u.s. government and u.s. industry is very keen to come in and supplant russia's gas imports into the e.u. which make up a third of their gas imports much of which crosses ukraine with replace it with renewable energy unfortunately republicans in the u.s. an industry in the us is quite keen to send in crude oil shale gas that's not the way to go now in terms of other negotiations i think ukraine president has shown that he's keen to negotiate when it comes to the east i think forays by the german

foreign minister steinmeier in the polish foreign ministers of course a key any effort to deescalate sikorsky saying that nato is not on the table for ukraine was a gesture of good gesture to russia and so any effort there to deescalate the rhetoric is key certainly ukraine president's speech on saturday is good in terms of amnesty for rebels wanting to disarm safe passage back to russia problem there. are also ukrainian citizens ukrainian citizens defending themselves i'm afraid you know there's a green men looking for these little green men just isn't really the case i mean it's ukrainians defending themselves people that speak russian and ethnic russians who mean well if i can if i can go to you to berlin i mean it seems to me that the west isn't trying to deescalate this here i mean they would tell their friend in that you better say pull back you militias stop killing people stop shelling apartment buildings were civilians live i mean it's i'm not i don't see the

escalation on the western side i see i see a lot of the escalation in the rhetoric coming from the russian side. i think you will completely get the point because we have to see that today's ukraine is more or less a sort of failed state failed entity which is disintegrated already so we have in the western ukraine the rest ukraine we have polish inquest the president and president poroshenko all gifts very contradicting messages since he was elected he said on the one side yes he wants to be escalate especially when he speaks towards the west but he says on the other side as well he wants to crush the uprising in the east he wants to take back crimea at the same time we hear for example. the speaker or the chairman of the right sector saying he can even imagine to put now are terrorists. on crimea so we see pushing course right now

playing on both violence when it comes to moscow and i heard something very interesting when i was interviewing last week a russian diplomat who said well to who should moscow speak if it comes to ukraine is it really that poroshenko is the one who has such a big influence on what is done in ukraine or not or is it the west which is spec'ing portion of the west could easily influence publishing co and the rest ukraine by saying if you are not negotiating if you are not coming down if you don't stop your attacks against civilians we will stop immediately all our support but the west doesn't do that by the way this is the same principle for example we see in syria the syrian war is going as long as the west is spec'ing the so-called rebellion at the moment the west doesn't back anymore any rebellion it will stop so it's the same in ukraine pushing for hence the support of the west and as long the west is not stopping that support with pushing him to serious negotiations it won't

stop it will go on then where do you think the ukrainian president i mean who do. where is his power base is it washington in brussels or is it people like the right sector he has a genuine support amongst the ukrainian people both in the east in the west and when he did poll far ahead of anybody else in the presidential elections and partly because he doesn't belong belong to any of the traditional camps neither the party of regions of unocal vish which was strong in the east nor the orange group strong in the west and the ukrainian people said in the election they basically want to break from the past they want to get rid of these oligarchic camps and make a fresh start with a pragmatist and publishing who works in both the end of corporate administration and in the orange ministration before that and so he is a pragmatist i mean if you listen to his rhetoric clearly at the moment the memo brought up a good point you know there's a question over his legitimacy when it comes to the east of the country i mean he's

whether sconce to in that west of the country where the ukrainian nationalist ukrainian speakers live moreover he has the backing of the west for the unclear but when it comes to the east is authority there is questionable in so much as lots of people in the east of ukraine were rejecting the european deal rejecting the european vision which is not to say they want to join russia tomorrow but they wanted more of a choice and so left with this impossible task of trying to please everybody when people on the two sides are shooting at each other because their disagreements are so so enraged at this point and he's going to have a very hard time of it but if you listen to his comments it when he says things like the nationalist things like he wants crimea back but he's also reached out to moscow and said that any future without russia for ukraine is not workable that russia is going to have to be involved in it and now we have this very difficult and long process of going through that and getting those two different messages to

reconcile each other and it has to happen at some point but the problem is in the meantime the fighting is going. the tensions remain high and so we had looking for a way to back out of it and this comes out of pragmatism so i mean the russians of have learned with an orange an olive branch in the form of trying to cut some sort of gas deal but you're right to say on the western side they have never been arguing this pragmatism they have no interest in either economic nor strategic in ukraine particularly not the usa at the same time they've been arguing purely on principle and when you've got one side arguing on principle and the other side arguing pragmatism there's no mean middle ground for them and so i think we're going to be stuck until particularly the west backs off its moral high ground and she starts to deal with the nuts and bolts issues of like we've got to make this country work again you know someone's going to have to finance it someone's going to have to help it you know with all the investment that it needs before you can actually get it functioning again and before any of that starts you need peace

exactly michael let me we need peace here why doesn't the ukrainian government call pull back its troops and its militias and start a dialogue. yeah well ben hit on a couple points that i'd like to reiterate the west has definitely escalated the situation as several of you have already mentioned obama calling for a billion more in military aid right when we were going to bring down our eighty thousand troops from europe a couple years ago the pentagon was ready to do that now the white house is ramping up military aid bolstering nato the wrong move it's escalating the situation i think poroshenko feels bolstered by the i.m.f. seventeen billion i think he feels bolstered by obama's rhetoric military ramp up of a nato so that's not helpful when i was in berlin in warsaw a couple months ago saner voices there were talking about deescalation they weren't putting nato on the table i think that's what we need to follow if there are any western voices there are more likely in berlin in warsaw than in washington so that's key for the u.s. government to back down its rhetoric i think vice president

a little good cop bad cop vice president biden over the weekend supporting porcher and co and saying yes the peace deals the way to go but then a bomb a talking about military ramp up so you're getting two voices from washington which isn't helpful when it comes to deescalate in the east when well you know it's amazing to me six months ago we the possibility of having the current situation seemed unthinkable you have an illegal coup you break up the country and now you have more military hardware going into europe i mean what a screw up. well when we when we look back i think in november or even october november december nobody really was what's what's really seeing that what will come that we will have such a geo political tsunami what is now going on in ukraine and we have to say the very clear it's not to reach thing it's not about what if maybe there will be a federalist say if federal sation off the eastern parts of the country or even if

they will split off it it's now and there's a lot on the state it's a big game now right now going on we see that we very debating in europe about i mean well then let me let me jump in here with me and you are going to go to a short break and after that you'll break we'll continue our discussion on ukraine change with our. new zealand. the as a discipline problem it was terrible to say the i'm very hard to make out to let you get along here is a plot that you never had sex with her make their lives let's

play. lists le me plz a bit. of a. so you like me you want your comedy news from t. comedy news to be a bare fisted no holds barred fight to dad. like a vampire biting into the next of the corporate elite billionaire freaks while they're going. well that's what you get with my new show projected

tonight. please. welcome back to crossfire for all things considered i'm peter lavelle to mind we're discussing the continuing crisis in ukraine. when i think back we'll go back to you in berlin you know i always wish when i look at the situation today on the ground i always reflect upon the agreement that was

agreed to on february twenty first where we had the e.u. brokering and we had a russian official in the room witnessing the signatures and there was a deal it was a deal to to have political reform in the country new elections there was a push towards that and then we all know what happened in the elected government an elected president was overthrown you know and looking back now that deal was such a sweet deal and i don't know if we'll ever get it again. no i think i think this was maybe a very very unique chance to end the conflict before it really escalates but now we have to see it escalated and we have a major geo political conflict right in front of the gates of the european union on the one side and right in front of the gates of moscow on the other side and we have to see that we speak now with since a couple of months in terms of a really hot cold war already i mean people are dying now every day especially in

the east of ukraine and we have to see the that our politicians now we have now again debates about the reinforcement of nato forces in europe and all of the sudden the nato is very much in fashion again in europe we see that nato air force us is going to do the politics dates and when we just one sentence when we think back why or what where the purpose of the nato when it was found that the spare the three things which were set by the first general secretary of the nato lord use me said the three keeps to keep the americans in europe to keep the russians down off europe and to keep the german stollen in europe so at least purpose one and three we see now it's very actual right now ben one of the biggest problems i think when when policymakers particularly in washington when they look at ukraine is that no partly east cannot dominate the west the west can dominate the east and in this is just a historical reality of cultural reality because we have very different narratives

of different populations within a country that is so diverse here and i think the diversity of ukraine is so misunderstood when it comes to policymakers particularly people like big torii a new one in this really goes back to what's been said from the very very beginning ukraine needs to deal with federalization or some kind of decentralization. i think the policy made to make is in the west of had a bit of a shock there was a very interesting paper this week from. these two academics in the states who have been following russia from the beginning and they were speculating that you know the from the u.s. perspective they were basically two options for russia or either we was going to reform and be pro western strong and successful it was posed to be under yeltsin or it was going to go down an authoritarian route or and then it would never reform and it would be economically weak and what we've actually seen is that it's gone not progress to the root and it's become economically strong at the same time and

there is simply not prepared for a perp prepared for this scenario and so everyone's been left scrambling to catch up again you'd look at the policymakers from the states who are watching the whole eastern europe and they're just cold war warriors who've come back to the fore and they've just put it back in those terms because that's their defaults understanding of a russia that's not pro western and is economically powerful and militarily for but we have a totally different situation to the cold war the two sides were antithetic the opposed to each other communism and capitalism but russia signed up to capitalism game and they're just asserting that saying that we're doing in a different way we have our own interests we you have any particular friendly to us and so we're going to assert our interest in ukraine we have a thousand years of shared cultural historical and economic values from the beginning and that you just can't walk off with ukraine without talking to us you

know our two economies are intimately tied together and you have to take that into account and that wasn't taken into account because it became this cold war play and hence we've got into this mess and they only way out is when the west wake up to the fact that you know things have changed but russia is an enemy these actually signed up to the capitalist. and therefore there should be some cooperation that can be done even if they're not going to be best friends but at the moment it's not being played like that it's all it's just you know get the nato war planes because nato was set up to defend against the soviet union and as far as they're concerned that's back again well that sums it up right there i mean michael is the it's very interesting is that if you look at public opinion polls of the people that lived in east ukraine before this conflict there wasn't much longing to be part of russia at all they just wanted to keep care of it by a they wanted more regional autonomy but as every day passes and the violence

continues the more and more people there would like to join russia now i mean again the law of unintended consequences breaking up the country partitioning the country which is in the cards. yeah i think his play paid lip service to local elections decentralization russian language in the east a lot of people are critical of it his lip service isn't genuine so we'll see how that plays out i want to go to the cold warriors cold war warriors point that ben made in washington and he's absolutely right there's a whole kind of bastion of older white men who were cold war experts and now have been brought out again and they're very excited because they have kind of renewed career here to weigh in on all things russia it is cold war mentality that's problematic that's not helpful and i think russia has signed up to the capitals club when i was in berlin i was talking with german business men and women there six thousand business people in russia who could negotiate with russia in a way that the governments perhaps can't i do think the private sector has

a role to play here in deescalating but i'd be curious for ben and well and peter your thoughts on the a c. and further negotiations going forward organization for security cooperation in europe are they the riots brokers for any negotiated agreement any ceasefire or how is that perceived in russia is a problematic so i'd be keen to question all three of you on the a c. and where should they take place st petersburg vienna elsewhere but to your point peter you any any gesture from par shango for the east currently perceived as disingenuous when the allies see i don't see it as being very fair broker it's a lot of former intelligence and military people that are involved in and i find them to be quite biased but what i think and i think the question back to everyone else here is that i think that the that washington in brussels and moscow should talk to the people they know on the ground there and you know go to helsinki or

something and sit around a table and talk why don't we start talking first i mean this is a twenty first century we all have email and stuff ok do it on twitter if you have to ok then this is where it has to go. it really has to get the players on the ground to start talking to each other because the forces think that it's that we're behind this forced regime change they're the ones that are maximalist they want everything and that's not going to work i think it doesn't matter which forum you choose i mean what does matter is some of the talks between kerry and lavrov america and russia which i found rather than so much is we're talking about europe and european country so what they have you know why when the europeans invited i mean the point with the table is that it has to have everyone at it i mean the second point is this this this point about capitalism because i think that's going to be the long term solution to this how we're going to you know mend these wounds

and his business is business german business is heavily invested into russia they're very interested in ukraine jaeger cultural potential there is enormous some i.p.o.'s that ukrainian companies have done in london have been hugely successful and have been long you know government has become more and more beholden to business and as those business ties develop and the money that's being made and the significant money russia and ukraine together you know form a massive consumer market and one of the few that still growing and as those business ties deeper then you're going to see the business lobby pressuring the government from beneath in order to find some sort of restitution between the fights and the whole thing with principle will go away because it will come back to the pragmatism of life but we have hundreds of millions of dollars invested into this country we are making huge profits as they catch up to our standard of living and that's going to go on for decades and then we'll get to a point where you know it will smooth all over i think i come back to my original point that one of the reasons why america has been so problematic in this is

because it has no interest neither economic most here in the region it will mind well that's right i mean the americans have an ideological interest they like to bring through force democracy that's what they call it anyway what it does is often just export chaos and the ukrainians are a victim of victims of it this time round. i think we have two contradicting ideologies now not not any more s. like in the old cold war when we had communism on the one side and capitalism on the other side we have now a sort of let me call it a post modernist or democratic. ideology coming from certain neo con circles from us will say we have to bring democracy everywhere and if the people don't want to take it with a color of illusion they will take it with some bombs this is on the one side and we have a concept of the from russia concept of civil rayna ts concept off of independence so these concepts are of course contradicting because the concept will not accept

any other concept which says we will talk on the same level so this for the first the second thing what your question was about why they are there no negotiations with the round table where the people sit we have one certain problem there should be one very important condition because if we do such a round table where russia is sitting where people from ukraine are sitting from the european states as well from the us and again i ask myself why should the us sit and such a table it's not their business so if they are sitting on the table there is one important point is that the states are negotiating on their own behalf and not on behalf of others this means germany the german minister steinmeier should sit there of the german chancellor and should negotiate on behalf of germany on behalf of the german business of the very important business relations with russia as well as to ukraine and not on behalf of nato and not on behalf of the friendship to washington

and on the behalf of the long tradition of liberal well us or whatever i think this is the major point that the european states should be months he paid them so first from the so-called west before we can negotiate in an equal way on the same level all right gentlemen we run we run out of time fascinating discussion. thanks to my guests and washington berlin and here in moscow thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r.b.c. you next time remember. unilever lisa bloom. times are. tough. but. we're going to go digital the price is the only industry

specifically mention in the constitution and. that's because a free and open process is critical to our democracy albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across several we've been a hydrogen client handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers once told us i'm tom hartman and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem trucks rational debate real discussion critical issues facing are not defined ready to join the movement then walk away from the big picture. here's the new i'm a grown woman i've got a polygamous family i'm looking for

a woman who understands we are in the way and i want her to share my goal of saving our people from extinction up through most of. the i've had two failed marriages and she's had one you would change how i do to you to what's been a chemist marriage and have decided to find a man to marry as both. we want to know women who could play your kids together because. you're my dream is to have let's say thirty to forty this was going to do that with only one what so it's impossible. i think. mind. and. all that. much and i've actually picked for a politician right. here

just to wrap. up. what's happened in party people i'm having martin and this is great in the set so you may have heard of a little company called goldman sachs you know the investment bank that was behind one of the because players behind the subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent financial catastrophe well take a listen to what goldman sachs c.e.o. lloyd blankfein had to say yesterday on c.b.s. is this morning. income inequality is a very destabilizing thing in the country in other words it's responsible for the divisions in the country the divisions could get wider if you can't legislate you can't deal with problems you can't deal with problems you can't drive growth and you can't.