not seeking reelection in the coming year and if far away second senator dianne feinstein who is also the wealthiest woman in congress has almost fifty nine million this includes the carlton hotel property she owns with her husband which saw only twenty million increase in value last year the democrat faces her most significant challenge for reelection this coming fall scott peters of san diego rounds out as the top third wealthiest member of congress on the lower end of the spectrum representative david ballad out of him for it is the poorest among california lawmakers that area farmer has assets of roughly two million however his hefty lines of credit of at least seventeen million puts him at the bottom of the list when it comes to net worth and there are other california members of congress in the red ten reported student loan debts totally three hundred seventy five thousand representative it. holds the majority of that debt as a former e.r. doctor the palm desert democrat owes roughly between one hundred to two hundred

fifty thousand dollars for his education now sometimes there are errors when it comes to these reports and many times the lawmakers are merely asked to file an amendment from an ethics panel but there is no actual standard as to how this information of their net worth is filled him in los angeles and sweets r.t. . wow oh politicians so like us really. wonder if there is that sense of feeling out of touch that when they talk about working class issues that always sends a little of op ed because they really have no idea even a two million dollar net worth i got to tell you that does sound like middle class as upper upper middle. look when you when you figure that the average household in the united states is probably you know make him somewhere around what that thirty to fifty thousand dollars a year is about that we have heard somewhere in there and these guys are polling and you know networks so one to two million to get their allies over two hundred

million dollars for a and then when you wonder what would you like your previous story and you say well why why would why would unions be being destroyed and things like that why would politicians allow that because millionaires don't like union rights you know as president millionaire business owners and things like that which most politicians are most politicians are either like you know big business owners or lawyers really what it comes down to that are going to. it and it's you know where we're talking about you know in terms of that gap between and how much it's grown yet the rest of us. don't know what everybody else is not worth has gone down about eight percent since two thousand and four the median that medium at median net worth of the members of congress was one million about one million twenty nine thousand dollars and twenty thirteen and the majority were millionaires so you've got let me add to that between eighty four and two thousand and nine when you're saying the well for them to medical american family was dropping the median net worth of congress more

than double seven hundred thousand dollars i mean has. any portably out a few thousand for their median net worth a member of congress for fifteen percent since two thousand and four there they make fifty and that's just their general so they're getting richer. this hello dark money and obvious things that the thing it's like you can sit there and cry foul every time somebody says follow the money and well they took money from this person and everything else but if you look at that list and you look at where they're actually making their money and making their wealth you will find connections and i think a proper ethics committee on every it's a really look at that and you would see a lot of people making decisions as a government employee that profit for them only and i would hope that those people in the tossers report who said that their logo was of the emergency you know driver you are doctor who is still paying off student loans to the sort of like a hundred g.'s i would hope that those people in california least the state of california would be fighting for student loan forgiveness to be there i think to

restructure that they're not you know and that's the thing that made up persist but i mean you know the that's the thing it's like we need representation in government and when the people who are supposed to be our representatives live in a completely different world in a completely different bubble that a majority of the people living in this country you don't have representative not for a socio economic scale at all they are not represented in this country the ninety nine percent of this country are not represented by people who understand them who are them who understand their wants needs desires their hopes their dreams they don't this is why we need election reform because it cannot be the only millionaires and billionaires can run for office we've got to change those rules and it starts with you at home getting out there running for mayor get the part of the community and thing in this go to the whole world everyone just of us throw messing mobile problem that as we go to break court watchers don't forget to let us know what you think of the topics we've covered on facebook and twitter so your poll shows that are coming up we talked to military industrial complex or someone

very familiar with its influence former brigadier general of the u.s. army and bestselling author told me to stay tuned for watchable. both the united states and russia have announced a nuclear weapons posture both countries are in tree a new age of war the age of hypersonic weapons we now in the news conference. it's been almost fifteen years since we've had human beings on the surface of another planetary body and i hope that we could actually put together an international lunar exploration initiative much like we have the international

space station consortium and together the countries of the world cooperating with the private sector could afford to get back into real space exploration and i think that would that would create a real a lot of excitement. where you could use one sort i just noticed i noticed a plane and one million people that. he killed. even dangerous. now no one's income tooling agent that he's rented and that's.

the u.s. department of defense is the world's largest employer with over three million people worldwide under their command and employment and many wonder how they balance the needs of soldiers with the needs of capitol hill former brigadier general tony tait out for the united states army and the author of direct fire the fort and his captain jake may he again thriller series joined us recently to get his take on reforms needed within the us armed services and after soldiers return home from war always a pleasure having you sort of thank you so much for coming on beard. i wanted to

start with an interesting interesting question from an interesting man i don't know if you're familiar of the medal of honor winner was a major marine corps major general smedley butler who these are back in the one nine hundred for those of you that don't know and he authored a book called war is a rocket and in that book he wrote i spent thirty three years and four months in active military service and during that period i spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for big business for wall street and the bankers i wanted to ask you in your experience is that still a problem today you know does that kind of money corporate influence that we know pulls so many strings in washington you know how much of a role does that play in the day to day business of the pentagon and where we choose to operate around the world you know i think that's a great question particularly watching the hawks you've got to watch this for a decision and we have to ask this question continuously and then as and i'm familiar with the general's comments in his book and and when when he fought

and war won for example the defense spending was forty percent of gross domestic product forty percent of g.d.p. today weren't five percent of g.d.p. and so i think that it may help frame the discussion a little bit where back in the day when he probably. saw was a lot of of you know contractors and businessmen and so forth maybe go into the bank and today it's much more scaled down and it's much more streamlined and we still do have issues with when you know the block order controversy is a good example where they they became too powerful they i know when i was a commander in afghanistan and you had some contract personnel come through terrain that you had worked six months to secure the friendships in the villagers in the in the local mayor and all that and then they blow through and shoot some people you're back to ground zero of negative turf because they're all americans and it's

all the same thing to the indigenous population so there's some of that that needs to be watched and sure you know this is what inspectors general do and what you know we all the audit trail stuff or. yeah there's probably a little bit of that but forty percent of g.d.p. versus five percent g.d.p. i think that's. you know we're not spending as much and relative relation to the size of the economy which is why i like right now we're not having rubber drives that sort of things like that so make some contacts stand there right what's interesting is just how big that even if we had so you know like you said i think a lot of it's private contractors we've talked a lot about because they don't fall under exactly the same. loyalty or i think honor in the field when you're there for a paycheck i think it's

a little bit different and one of those is that just gotten so big they're much like the banks so the u.s. defense department has three point two million employees that makes it one of if not the biggest employer in the world right we spend more on defense than the next eight countries combined with this big amount of money and with so much beer. ocracy which all of us would like to see effects and so much bureaucracy and so much spending it to me feels a little like the big banks where i feel like is there or is it impossible to draw down our military at this point because of how bad it is from contractors to the banks to all this sort of interchange of military industrial complex is another great question you know that and i'm glad that we're having these conversations because they're important conversations when you think about the size of the military you know gulf war one eight hundred thousand and change troops in the army today word forty five around five hundred so the scaling of the army very

intentional by the framers of the constitution by the way that's raise an army but maintain a navy and a very very much project power but always be wary of a large standing federal army and the right that's one of the things that the framers constitution put in there and so as we see the accordion a fact you know we're going to war so we increase the size of the army we got up to around five eighty i want to say during iraq and afghanistan because we needed it and now we're you know we we drop that down about eighty thousand so you see the scaling of the active duty reserve and national guard forces and then there are so that's about half of the you know two point nine or three million people that you're talking about the other half are civilians and are and so looking at those there's always every new administration that comes and says we're going to take a hard look at you know the size of this bureaucracy and i'm sure that the things

are being reviewed now i know that when the president president trump came in he put a freeze on hiring so that you could take a snapshot and actually know what you have because there's constant churn and so there's you know the bureaucracy it's always too big a field soldier former paratrooper and i. was always like you know get rid of a few of those bureaucrats and give me one or two more troops you know get rid to give me one and that way you can have more detail a ratio which right now may be a little skewed you know that's that's actually what i was going to ask because it's very it's intriguing i think because these are important questions like you said because ultimately it is you know u.s. tax dollars at work so it is the citizen from that army alternately you know there are military and i think the that it's important for these questions to be because and so that's the one thing i want to ask you as someone who's in the field and spent a lot of your your time in the service in the field you know how did that bureaucracy

become a handicap in terms of being able to operate in the way that you would you hope you could operate and the you know keep people safe create the best relations you can given the circumstances of wire in a core of a country and you know how invasive was that bureaucracy coming back from what the pentagon says yes so you know when you when you think i see the picture the pentagon here in the background i'm thinking that i wanted to be in afghanistan on the pentagon and you know it's a lot but the i think the relationship is that when when you've got when you're thinking about the importance of the troops on the ground and how it scales back to who or whatever that support system is you've got the leadership has to make sure that that support system is resourcing the soldier on the ground and so for me as the deputy commander general tenth mountain division brigade commander one hundred first airborne eighty second airborne battalion commander i was always as very

focused downward on in taking a look at the what my mission was and so at the national level we need to make sure that we're looking at ins ways and means what are the vital interests of the united states and are we are we scaling the military industrial complex to address those vital interests. and is that drive in it or is it the military industrial complex and striving to get back to to the you know larger part of the discussion because there is a level bit of greed there i mean you can whenever you introduce businesses into any situation whether it be military or utility televisa what always profits going to be the profit driven decision making or not is the big fear to me is that this is what happens when and i say i believe i see it all the time as i see too many military decisions made by politicians that you can clearly see trace.