Transcripts For KQEH Moyers Company 20131102

Foundation, a john and polly guth charitable fund. The clements foundation. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations Whose Mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The bernard and audre rapoport foundation. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org. Anne gumowitz. The betsy and jesse fink foundation. The hkh foundation. Barbara g. Fleischman. And by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Welcome. The disposition matrix sounds like the title of a suspense thriller. But thats what americas counterterrorism experts call their database, the list of those our government believes are preparing to do america harm. From it, targets are chosen for assassination. However, the drones they use are not always so selective and often kill innocent civilians, including children. Last tuesday, for the first time, drone attack victims testified at a briefing for members of congress. Five members showed up. The briefing coincided with the release of a new documentary, unmanned americas drone wars, the latest from brave new films, produced and directed by robert greenwald. It tells the story of civilians who have lost their lives to drones and includes the testimony of others. Among them, brandon bryant, a former american drone operator who carried out attacks by Remote Control from a military base in new mexico. Getting into the Drone Program was weird. The introduction is like, this is what we do, we kill people and break things. That is what our job is. And depending on atmospherics, if it was a completely clear day, youd definitely get a good picture. And depending on how close you were you could probably read the license plate on someones car. We can see something as simple as people playing a soccer game. We can see individual players, and we can even see the ball. One of those featured in the film is tariq aziz, 16yearsold. He lived in the mountainous region of northern pakistan, and he loved to play soccer. In april 2010, his 18yearold cousin, asmar ullah, was killed by a missile fired from an american drone as he rode his motorcycle. A year and a half later, tariq, determined to tell his cousins story, made a tough, daylong journey through treacherous terrain to attend a gathering in the capital of islamabad, where tribal elders met with western journalists to describe the drone war being waged in their homeland by the United States. 0. It was a gathering to get the voice of the victims of drone attacks out to the world. That was the main goal. We were going to use the media to try and establish who had been killed. And also why, where and how. Well because of the inaccessibility of waziristan, its very, very hard to compile any kind of credible evidence or evidence that others will see as credible. That is part of the reason why we organized this conference at islamabad. We called it a jirga. A jirga is a traditional tribal gathering. Its what people in that area use to settle their disputes. This is simply indiscriminate bombing there are so many women and children killed. At one stage i came upon a young boy, tariq aziz. When i was talking to tariq, one of the first things that he did was he handed me his cousins student id card. And as i looked at it i looked back at tariq and i noticed he was crying. He started to tell me the story of his cousin who had been killed from a drone strike. Hed come to the jirga primarily to inform us a little bit more about what had happened to his cousin to people in his local village and find out how to stop the killing. We sat together all day. We ate together at lunch time. We laughed together. We became friends. Tariq was extremely intelligent and funny to be around. He had a nice sense of humor. He was fascinated by photography and intrigued by western music, mentioning artists and one that sprang to mind was lady gaga. He started to talk about drone strikes in his village, how he was unable to sleep at night. So he was scared he was worried about his family, his friends. Tariq was traumatized. And the people who were gathered there adopted a resolution condemning the strikes. Then we went together to a rally, and tariq aziz traveled there with us. Thousands of pakistanis came to support a giant rally on sunday. The protest against the United States drone attacks in pakistan. The drones are violations of the people of pakistan as well as their human rights. People from all over the country irrespective of their ages and backgrounds came together to the rally. After that, tariq aziz and the other attendees returned to their homes. Three days later, tariq and another cousin, 12yearold waheed khan, were driving to pick up players for a soccer match. In a flash, both young people were killed by a cia drone strike, the car destroyed, their bodies badly burned. Two days later i got a call. I got an email. I was at work when we found out. We got an email and a telephone call. Four days after the jirga, i received an email from shazhad. The email simply said tariq as the heading. And i opened it instantly. To my shock, i found out that tariq had been murdered by a drone strike. And that was a shock. And we were like, how, how is it possible . Where was he . What was he doing . And its like completely unbelievable. If the u. S. Had any information that tariq aziz was part of a criminal organization, was planning to carry out attacks on the United States, then our federal Law Enforcement agents should have been working with the authorities of pakistan to arrest him. And one really has to ask the question why the government was not able to arrest or even question him. This is islamabad were talking about. Its the capital of the country. Population is over a million people. Jirga was a real public event. It was at a big hotel. It was advertised widely. It was an open event. Tariq aziz was plainly visible to hundreds and hundreds of people. He talked with reporters. Everything about him that the authorities could have wanted to know about his location and about his recent activities were known to the United States. It would have been extremely easy for them to approach him, sit down and talk to him or, for that matter, put him in jail. But instead the cia chose to go and kill him without giving him the opportunity to give his side of whatever it is that they thought that he had done. There is no evidence there whatsoever. And theyve given him no lawyers, theres no judge and theres no jury. Our preference is always to capture if we can because we can gather intelligence. But a lot of the terrorist networks that target the United States, the most dangerous ones, operate in very remote regions and its very difficult to capture them. But what we can discern from the pattern of strikes is that essentially pakistans been declared a no capture zone, that automatically capture is not considered feasible. If we just look at the numbers, there have been dramatically more People Killed in recent years than have been captured. There are no cia agents in waziristan so they rely on local people. And this is where the fundamental wrong is because these people are working for you for money. And that reliance is utterly misplaced, and what you see in tariqs case and it just pains me to say this you know without any real room for dispute that there was someone in that room when we were having our jirga who was an informant for the u. S. Intelligence services and that that person picked out tariq. I can tell you as a matter of fact that tariq was not an extremist. And the way you know what intelligence they relied on to kill someone is what they release immediately after the killing. And in that case they said four militants were killed, and of course we know two kids were killed. Thats how it happened. I asked the cia about the strike, and their response was that on that day no child was killed, in fact the adult males were supporting al qaedas facilitation network. So despite all of these technological assets and human assets, were not there, we dont know, and i think there is a lot of room for error. You can see robert greenwalds film in its entirety at the website unmanned. Warcosts. Com. I urge you to watch it with a companion because you will want to talk about the questions it raises concerning National Security, drones, and the nature of war. Then id like to know what you think. Remember that in the excerpt we showed earlier the former drone operator says, this is what we do, we kill people and break things, this is what our job is. Its true. Once we insist on war as a solution, this is always the outcome. There is no way to avoid killing the innocent when youve determined to destroy your enemy. Our own government has fought our wars by dropping atomic bombs on whole cities. By firebombing. Carpetbombing. By spreading the poison of agent orange over the homes and farms of noncombatants. By splashing burning napalm on children. In this war on terror, were told either we put boots on the ground and see our own young men and women killed or we put drones in the sky firing missiles at strangers who can be seen only from a distance. If you were president obama, what choice would you make . Id like to hear your succinct and considered response. Write me at billmoyers. Com or on facebook. I promise to read every response. Lets turn now to another big story most of us know even less about than drones. Tpp, the Transpacific Partnership. Its a trade agreement the United States is negotiating with australia, canada, japan and eight other countries in the pacific region. If you dont know about the tpp, and few do, its because the powerful people behind it, including president obama, dont want you to know. The negotiations are shrouded in secrecy, and once they are completed, obama wants to rush the agreement through congress, fasttracking, they call it, with our elected representatives given the choice only of voting it up or down. Last year, over 130 members of Congress Asked the white house for more transparency about whats being negotiated and were essentially told to go fly a kite. You can be sure of this, however. A select group of corporate partners, Companies Like generax electric, goldman sachs, and pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant, are not likely to be in the dark. Players like these stand to be the real beneficiaries of the agreement, because like other socalled free trade agreements, tpp actually will reward those at the top, even as it creates rules that will override domestic laws on the environment, workplace safety, and investment. Corporate lobbyists already are lining up in washington to ram the agreement through once the white house hurries it out of the delivery room. How do we know this . Because some vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the negotiations with sources they trust, and two are with me now. Yves smith is an expert on Investment Banking and the founder of aurora advisers, a new york based Management Consulting firm. She runs the naked capitalism blog, a goto site for information and insight on the business and ethics of finance. Dean baker is codirector of the Progressive Center for economic and policy research in washington, dc. Hes been a senior economist at the Economic Policy institute and a consultant to congress and the world bank. I rarely miss his blog, beat the press, and im a regular reader of his column in the guardian newspaper. When im saying directly involved, essentially the industry groups. So its not as though weve brought the environmentalists there to talk about what sort of an environmental regulation we want around fracking. You have the industry groups, the oil and gas industry, theyre sitting down there with their counterparts in the other countries deciding what sort of regulations youll have on fracking. So its a very peculiar way to go about doing a treaty. And i think if there were more Public Knowledge of it, people would be very unhappy. Its very peculiar to have an agreement of this importance be kept so much under wraps. One of the things that is known is apparently only 5 of the 29 chapters actually have anything to do with trade. So really its a mistake to call it a trade agreement. This is really an agreement thats purpose is substantially to weaken nationbased regulation while at the same time strengthening intellectual property protections. So its basically a gimme to it would restrict buying local of all sorts. So, for example, governments would not be able to, you know, say, were only going to be able to buy from people in state or people in the u. S. It would make things like gmo labeling impermissible. It would weaken environmental regulations. So, for example, you couldnt say, gee, you know, chinese tilapia, we dont want to import that anymore because its become too toxic. That kind of restriction would not be permissible. Yeah, let me carry that even a step further with the prescription drugs, just to try and put some dollars and cents on that. We spend around 300 billion a year on prescription drugs. Without patent and other similar protection, wed be spending about 30 billion. So this is, you know, how much for paying extra for prescription drugs because we have patentrelated protections. Now, you could imagine a trade agreement, if this was really about trade, wed be going, how can we bring those prices down . But instead, what you have is the Drug Companies there, and theyre not talking about how to bring them down. Theyre talking about how to bring them up. Primarily in other countries, but theyd like to bring them up in the United States as well. Is that free trade . Its the opposite. That law, is the patent law free trade . Its a protection. And thats what i just find right. So amazing. Its called patent protection. And then theyre going, thats free trade. And no, this is a governmentgranted monopoly. And that just speaks to, you know, how convoluted our language has become, that its not free trade if we dont extend the governmentgranted monopoly long into the future. Doesnt the Entertainment Industry also stand to gain . Yes. I mean, one of the things that theres a european counterpart of the Transpacific Partnership thats also under negotiation. One of the things that france is upset about is that they provide subsidies to their Entertainment Industry. The idea that a french film that would only appear in an art house cinema is any threat to the american movie industry, i mean, thats absurd. And yet that kind of thing would not be permissible under that version of the deal. One of the things that would happen apparently under both deals is even more severe restrictions on copying and transfers, to the point where one of the leading an Internet Group called the Electronic Frontier foundation said it would even interfere with the basic operation of the internet because things like temporary copies wouldnt be permitted under this rule. Also, theres an issue of enforcement here that people might remember the stop online piracy act that they were trying to get through in the United States a couple years ago, and of course there was a big uprising against, a lot of grassroots opposition, a lot of companies, in fact, came out in opposition to it. And one of the big points there was that it required third parties. So someone posted something on my website that turned out to violate a copyright of Warner Brothers, well, under that, i could be held liable for this. Warner brothers could take action, legal action, against me. As it stands now, if i have material that violates their copyright, its incumbent on Warner Brothers to go, oh, you have to take this down. And then i have, you know, its a reasonable time period to take it down. So is this why you wrote the other day, this could make google, facebook, and indeed anyone with a website into a copyright cop . Exactly. But this is the paradox to me. I mean, as youve just said, stronger copyright and patent protection is the very opposite of free trade. They involve government interference and intervention in the market. They restrict competition. They lead, as youve just said, to higher prices for consumers. How can you describe this as a freetrade agreement . I think the free trade idea is whats being used to bully a lot of the countries into it, that if youre not part of this deal youll somehow be left on the outside. You know, theres a big argument apparently in japan about this right now, that japan is one of the late joiners to the negotiations. And some groups in japan have started objecting. The governments saying, well, if we dont participate, you know, everybody else will be in and well be out. So thats the leverage that america is apparently using to try to get people on board. But this is really important to point out it isnt free trade. You know, if you look at the actual trade barriers that exist between the United States and these other countries, at this point, theyre almost all very small. You know, if you have a tariff of 1 or 2 , you know, things like that, it really doesnt matter whether its there or at zero. So what this is really about is, you know, these sorts of, in many cases, provisions increasing barriers or restricting the ability to have environmental regulations, health and safety regulations. Thats what its really about. Trades really peripheral. Thats how this works in combination with the secrecy provision. Its free trade because nobody knows otherwise. What is your greatest concern about this . I think the drugs one is my biggest one. And the second one, frankly, is Financial Services because this would also basically make a lot of Financial Services regulation that we now have pretty much impossible. It would force how so . It would force everything well, apparently Financial Services is one of the chapters. And so, again, it would lead to a race to the bottom, that any country, that any signatory to the pact could say, gee, you know, x, y, z country has weaker regulations. Youre hurting us by making us adhere to this higher standard. And in particular, and another sort of interesting conflict is that one of the things that it rules out is capital controls. Now, historically, people used to say that, you know, again, the sort of simpleminded idea that capital controls werent such a good thing. And now the imf has come around and has said that capital controls, you know, certain types, are actually desirable. Chile and malaysia had them both going into the crisis, and they did better than a lot of other countries as a result of having them. But that in fact may be one of the things that makes a steel founder, that some of the countries that have them and like them are objecting to the faculties that are included in the pact. Is it conceivable to you that this could affect the enforcement of doddfrank, which was ostensibly passed to prevent another great crash like 2008 . Could this affect the enforcement of doddfrank . Yeah. No, i mean, certainly the derivatives regulation, and i would expect the capital levels. Theres no how . How would that work . The first language in both these deals goes something along the lines with, all signatories are required to make their laws and regulations conform to the standards of this agreement. They are literally required to make their nationbased laws subordinate to the terms of these agreements. And, again, we dont know exactly whats in them. But the whole notion is that they are to permit very liberalized capital flows and minimal restrictions. So doddfrank basically is inconsistent with that. So Foreign Trade partners would conceivably be allowed to challenge american laws . Yeah. Thats exactly the point. Thats the point. You know, one of the things it extends is a concept that exists in nafta, which is that you have special panels that companies can go to to get matters adjudicated if they believe that regulations have led them to lose profit. And its not even necessarily that theyve currently lost profit. Its that they have potentially lost profit. For example, one case thats now pending under nafta is that quebec has an antifracking prohibition to protect the st. Lawrence river valley. Theres a u. S. Company thats suing 250 million. And if they win that case before the special panel, the Quebec Government will have to pay that amount. Under the tpp, youll see an enormous expansion of that kind of power. Both of you are good at arguing the other side for the purposes of debate. So whats good about this . Why should anybody be for this freetrade agreement thats not a freetrade agreement . Yeah, it is really hard for me to see. Im sure if we had the whole text in front of us, im sure you know, both of us would be able to find things, wed go that good, that good. I mean, there has to be something thats good. You know, the way its being constructed, its not the way in which you design a treaty thats intended to benefit the bulk of the population of either the United States or the other countries. I mean, you wouldnt just have the corporate interest there, and thats literally what youve done. I mean, its kind of amazing. What are they going to do . Theyre going to try to ensure that it maximizes their profits. Now, not everything they have there is going to be bad, but i suspect most of the clauses in there are going to be to advance their interest. One of the aspects of the Transpacific Partnership is its an everyonebutchina deal. One of the intentions of the deal is to isolate china. So if you think isolating china is a good thing, then that would be a reason to support the deal. Now, in fact, ironically, a lot of the companies that are supporting this deal may not have thought through all of the implications because a lot of them have extended supply chains that go through china. If this disrupts their current supply chains, they might actually have to reorganize their lives a bit more than they had thought. Our economies are very integrated. One would expect that theyll continue to be integrated. You know, so the idea that were going to isolate them, i dont really see how that would work in any case. But if that were a goal of policy, if we actually could get to a situation where we did sort of separate the countries, that would not be a pretty picture. So i think we have to look to integrate with them and ideally on better terms than we currently have. Some people refer to this pacific deal as the north American Free trade agreement on steroids. Does that make sense to you . Well, it does because the north american trade agreement in the end wound up helping corporations and didnt do much for american workers. In fact, there have been economists whove said that nafta produced as much as nearly a million job losses in the u. S. And the whole notion of this agreement is to facilitate the movement of capital and to give capital even more privileges than it has now. So, you know, workers, except for a few who have a seat at the table like the uaw, are basically at the back of the bus on this one. President clinton promised a lot with nafta. Listen to this. Nafta will tear down trade barriers between our three nations. It will create the Worlds Largest trade zone and create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone. The environmental and laborside agreements negotiated by our administration will make this agreement a force for social progress as well as economic growth. Did nafta bring us hundreds of thousands of jobs . Did we get better environmental and labor standards . What did we get . Youd be very hardpressed to see us having gotten jobs from nafta. I mean, you had a number of companies you could identify that shift operations to mexico. And that was clearly the main point of the agreement because there are extensive chapters on investment and much of the agreement was about making it easy for, say, a general electric, General Motors to shift their operations to mexico and know that they would be guaranteed that there wouldnt be an issue of expropriation, they wouldnt have to worry about repatriating their profits. That was really the point of the agreement. So we did lose a lot of jobs to mexico for that reason. In terms of the environmental and labor standards, those were thrown in as an afterthought. Now, you have had some effort to take advantage of those. I wouldnt really say its had much impact. I mean, basically to help the situation of some unions in mexico or workers trying to organize unions in mexico, but those really were an afterthought. And they werent intended. Its the way its always treated. The investment stuff is serious. You dont play games with it. The labor stuff is like, oh, okay, you can talk about it. Theres no real enforcement mechanism. No ones going to go to court and pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damage because they didnt comply with the terms of the labor conditions. Same with the environment, right . Exactly. And its not that we couldnt put terms in. I mean, these are all intelligent people. If we wanted to put in terms with that agreement that had enforceable environmental standards, they would be there. And then if you had a situation where a company was breaking those standards, they would be paying very serious damages. That has not happened because of nafta. Ross perot, whom as you both know ran as a thirdparty candidate in 1992 against george h. W. Bush and bill clinton, warned us against nafta. Listen to this. If youre paying 12, 13, 14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factories south of the border, pay 1 an hour for labor, hire young 20 thats assuming youve been in business for a long time, youve got a mature workforce. Pay 1 an hour for your labor, have no healthcare, thats the most expensive single element making the costs, have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you dont care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south. He was prophetic. Yeah. Well, and the funny bit about his math is that actually one of the things which is distressing, and apparently this is actually worse in the tpp, but the companies had tended to move production even when the economic case was very weak. And so when that happens, what youre really seeing is a transfer from youre not really seeing shareholders benefit. Youre basically seeing a transfer from factory labor to the Top Executives that youre cutting their pay. To the Top Executives, there are Industries Like furniture. I mean, when think about it. Weve got u. S. Wood, and the shipping to china, and then shipping it back. You know, a lot of the values in that wood, you would lose a lot in the transit time, you also lose a lot in flexibility. And people in industries where youve got a lot of u. S. Content in things that are shipped overseas and then sent back, and theyve said, the economic case just isnt very strong. But we did it because our stock would get a pop from it. During the 2008 campaign, candidate obama was skeptical about nafta. Heres what he said then. Scrap nafta, senator obama, or fix it . I would immediately call the president of mexico, the president of canada to try to amend nafta because i think that we can get labor agreements in that agreement right now, and it should reflect the basic principle that our trade agreements should not just be good for wall street, it should also be good for main street. And the problem that weve had is that weve had corporate lobbyists oftentimes involved in negotiating these trade agreements, but the aflcio hasnt been involved. Ordinary working people have not been involved. And weve got to make sure that our agreements are good for everybody because globalization right now is creating winners and losers. But the problem is, its the same winners and the same losers each and every time. What do you suppose is the influence on president obama that caused him to reverse course on nafta and not fulfill what was a Campaign Pledge . Well, i think its the nature of politics in the United States. I mean, its not a secret. You know, you have very powerful politically, economically people who, you know, are pushing for this. And you know, we saw this with wall street, you know, when president obama first came into office. You know, at that point, you know, wall street is on its back, meaning the financial industry. And basically president obama had it in his ability to break up the big banks, totally restructure finance. He decided not to go that route. And his top advisors, well robert rubin played an enormous role, you know, as the Top Executive at citigroup and formerly goldman sachs. He was not going to go that route because these are the people he was listening to. And i think thats continued to be the pattern throughout his administration, thats hes listening to people with a corporate interest he was just talking about there. Those are the people who are steering the policy. I mean, id go a little bit further than dean on that in that when you look at obamas record of his Campaign Promises versus what hes actually done, theres sort of a normal, acceptable level of political lying, and obama has gone way past what is historically been normal in terms of, you know, politician fudging and then doing Something Else when theyve been in office. This is just another example. Do you buy deans argument that it is the power of wall street . I think obamas fundamentally a very conservative person. The idea that he ran as the antibush because the country was desperate for somebody other than bush. So he sold what would sell. Hes liberal on social issues, but economically hes not very different than the republicans. This discussion brings me to the economy. As you both know, the september jobs report, which was delayed by the government shutdown, was weak by all reports. What is it going to take to turn our economy around for working people and middle class people out there who really are in pain . Well, we clearly need much more rapid growth, and its just not on the agenda. And its sort of like, you know, they seem to be hoping when im saying they, people in washington, you know, including the obama administration, somehow somethings just going to jump out of nowhere. And the economy doesnt work that way. So, you know, if were going to see more rapid growth, you know, its fairly narrow places it has to come from. You know, are we going to see some surge in consumption . Very hard to see. Is there going to be a surge in investment . You know, very hard to see. Basically, the governments the one entity that has the ability to boost the economy. By spending money . By spending money. Larger deficits. You know, that is what it boils down to. And thats, you know, you cannot say that. I mean, ive talked to people in the administration, talked to people in congress, they go, oh, ill get killed if i say that. Well, some of them got to say it because that happens to be true. Do you believe it . Absolutely. I mean, if you want to look at the economy in a very simple way, well just get rid of the importexport sector because for the u. S. , this wont change the story. Youve got households, youve got the government, youve got businesses. Households tend to be net savers because people save for retirement and emergencies. Businesses we like to think of businesses as being net borrowers because businesses invest and spend. And then therefore the notion is the reason that a lot of people are opposed to government running deficits is that theyre afraid that the government will borrow and crowd out business investment. The fact is that businesses even in the last expansion under bush were net saving, which is so basically capitalists arent acting like capitalists anymore. Theyve gotten so shortterm oriented. And in a weak economy, you know, theyve got they pull in their horns, they dont spend a lot, they dont invest then either. And now weve got companies literally borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars. Theyve got record levels of cash. What are they doing . Theyre buying back stock. So this is actually the time government should be running deficits, and yet its anathema to say it politically. Well, why is that . I mean, it seems to me the other side has won the argument. Well, theyve won it politically. Whats striking is theyve lost it completely in academic economics. This is an active area of economic research. At this point, theres been literally dozens of papers produced that show if we want to see growth in the economy today, the governments going to have to run larger deficits. So the opponents of big deficits say, no, thats going to undermine business confidence. So whatever the government does by way of increasing spending, were going to undermine business confidence, weve got Consumer Confidence so that well offset it. People have studied this and, you know, including the International Monetary fund, which i mention here because not so much that theyre just authoritative, but they tend to be conservative. Youd expect them to typically be on the opposite side of this. Theyve produced a number of papers showing that show, no, the current context, bigger deficits will lead to more growth, more jobs. But politically you cant say that. And i will disagree with yves on this because i do think trade actually could be part of the story, but here again they cant talk about that. If you go to someone in the administration, to my view, if you wanted to see an improved trade balance, get the dollar down. Very simple. A lowervalued dollar means our goods are cheaper elsewhere in the world, imports are more expensive to people in the United States, so we buy more domestically produced goods, fewer imports. Exchange policy, Exchange Rate policy is something we dont talk about. So the two things that could boost the economy, larger deficits, lowervalued dollar, are both things that they dont talk about. You both keep saying they dont talk about this crucial issue, they dont talk about that crucial issue, they dont take this stand and speak the truth to us. Whats going on . I wrote something in 2010. I said that obama believes that the response to any policy problem is better propaganda. And unfortunately, i think this was an illustration of that phenomenon. But is it better propaganda get jobs, job growth is down, we need to spend money, and theyre not doing it . He won in 2012 even with a terrible economy. So it didnt, you know, it didnt seem to running bad policies didnt seem to prevent him from getting reelected. And the people in positions of power, theyre basically doing okay. I mean, the stock markets up, corporate profits are at nearrecord highs. So, you know, for the people in power, theyre doing fine. Im not saying that theyre all, you know, like, evildoers who want people to suffer. But, you know, ive been, you know, im sure you could turn on the news any day of the week and youll hear a roundtable like this, you wont be there, i wont be there, yves wont be there. And theyll go, look, we just have to get through a tough time. And invariably the people at the table arent experiencing a tough time. So its saying, you know, those tens of millions of people that are either unemployed or partially employed, havent had a wage increase in years, theyre going to have to get through tough times. So theres a real disconnect. The people who are sort of making policy, passing judgment on policy, theyre okay. Its all these people around the country that are really suffering who dont really have a voice. Yeah, i think its even and i think to amplify that, if you go to washington, d. C. , you know, its incredibly prosperous. And most d. C. People, to the extent they leave d. C. , they come to new york, and if you stay in the better parts, if you stay in manhattan, things look fine in manhattan. Now, you have to not look out the window of the acela. I mean, if you did, youd see how bad things are. But, you know, its very easy to ignore whats happening because again, as dean said, you know, these people all deal with other people who are basically doing fine and they dont hear or have much contact with the people who are suffering. Well, this brings us to the upcoming big fight over Social Security and medicare. Top republicans are saying repeatedly that they will be glad to end the sequester, the acrosstheboard federal cuts that took place earlier this year, if democrats agree to future cuts in Social Security and medicare. How do you both think this is going to play out . Well, president obamas indicated hes been willing to make cuts in both Social Security and medicare. But i think he needs something more in taxes than the republicans are prepared to give. So my guess is that you wont see that. But it does have me very concerned. These are openly on the table. And you look at the condition of todays elderly, i think youre really hardpressed to say that they have too much money. I mean, for 40 of people over age 65, their Social Security check is more than 90 of their income. And these are checks that average a little over 1,200 a month. So to say that these people are doing so well, we should be looking to cut back their benefits or have them pay more for medicare, that to my mind seems 180 degrees wrong track. I think to put it more bluntly, no one is willing to talk about the fact that Social Security and medicare cuts equal having old people die faster. And that the proposals to do that are indirect and theyve labeled them in technical language so that most people wont realize thats whats happening. I mean, chained cpi, you know, thats a myeyesglazeover term. Consumer price index . Right, and so thats the mechanism by which the Social Security is going to be cut, is that the cuts will basically lag the inflation that seniors experience. And yet i can just show you the headlines. President obama said the other day the country has to address day the country has to address longterm obligations that we have around things like medicare and Social Security. The chair of the Senate Budget committee, patty murray, democrat from Washington State says, all issues are on the negotiating table. The number two democrat in the senate, dick durbin, told fox news on sunday that Social Securitys going to run out of money in 20 years, medicare may run out of money in 10 years, lets fix it now. Thats dick durbin, number two man in the senate. I mean, it sounds like democrats are in a bargaining mood. Absolutely. The one thing we have going for us is the vast majority of people across the country in both Political Parties are strongly opposed to these cuts. You know, so that is the thing they have to overcome. You get 75 to 80 of republicans, Tea Party Republicans that are opposed to cuts to these programs. But just to take the specific points that, you know, senator durbin raised, if you look at Social Security, its gone from being about 4 of our economy in 2000 to about 5 today. Its projected to be about 6 in 20 years. Thats because we have an aging population, the baby boomers. We can handle that. Thats not a big deal. But when you talk about medicare, its a totally different story. Thats being driven by our healthcare costs. We spend more than twice as much per person as the average for other wealthy countries. We have nothing to show for it in terms of outcomes. We have to fix our health care system. So talking about were going to take this from seniors is totally wrongheaded. Now we can go back to our trade deal and say, okay, lets get lowercost drugs. Lets get lowercost doctors. There are things we can do to fix health care. Ive been on panels with a lot of these people that go, oh, but dean, fixing health cares hard. I thought you were the tough guys. Theres a piece of this thats even uglier, which is that the statistics that everyone relies on, you know, all the people that you quoted, come from the Congressional Budget Office. Theyre the more skeptical economists who have looked at them, have actually found pretty Serious Problems with their forecast, that even though they are, quote, nonpartisan in terms of not being affiliated with either party, they have in fact taken a very deficithawkish approach to the way they put their numbers together. Two economists who are at the federal reserve, and they are probably the two most qualified economists in the country, they wrote a paper on the cbos Health Care Cost forecast, and they shredded them. So if you were to use these fed economists forecasts, you wouldnt be anywhere near as concerned. You wouldnt have the drive to quote, fix, end quote, these programs. But i think its back to deans point, that its actually for medicare, its a reflection of the way we do health care in this country. And the fact that weve got doctors are paid for services and therefore they have an incentive to recommend more services. Youve also got a population which is trained to think that more treatment is better. The desire to intervene quickly, even for things that arent very serious, is very strong here. Yeah, id agree with that completely. And just making a couple points again, Social Security, i think its just absurd to think of this as a problem. Were aging. I dont think thats a bad thing. I mean, we could all have us die younger, but i dont think people would really think thats a good story. So thats going to cost money. And it does cost more money today than it did 20 or 30 years ago. Its going to cost more money 20, 30 years from now. If people of normal wage growth, if people got their share of economic gains, wed be talking about beforetax wages 30 years out that are 40 or 50 higher than they are today. You know, thats not an issue. Now when it comes to health care, you know, yves is exactly right. But the other thing, you know, i think we have to put this in some context. We dont know, and i think youre exactly right that the projections are likely too high. But lets say the Congressional Budget Office projections prove right. I dont think were going to have morons running the country in 25 years. So if it really is the case that were looking at these really big Health Care Costs, they will be able to deal with that then. Well, on what basis do you make such a prediction . Well, the reality. However much i might be critical of congress and the president , we dont have a history of runaway deficits. As much as they like to say, oh, we we actually dont. You know, and id argue they probably did too much. You know, you go back to the clinton ra z years, you know, they said, oh, we got to balance the budget. And of course they did. But the idea that we just had exploding deficits that, you know, congress and our president just looked the other way. We dont have any history of that. Yves, explain this then. It seems that, although the facts and argument may be on your side, the politics of it is going in the other direction. Well, theres a very effective messaging apparatus that doesnt include middleclass americans. I think thats what it boils down to, you know, that the people that the reporters get their information from are the ones that significantly push stories. And a very significant percentage of the stories that appear for a very long period of time have always been driven basically by press releases or messaging. And pew studies have basically found the same thing is true now, that half the stories are literally promoted to the media. And then in the other half, inevitably, if youre a journalist, youre going to call some famous person whos legitimate, you know, to get the sort of plus and minus. And most of the famous people who are legitimate are, you know, either important government officials who are largely on board with this story or theyre going to be business interests. There are unfortunately very small only very small pockets of people who are considered to be legitimate that a journalist would call to get the other side of the story. We started with free trade. Lets close with free trade. Youre on the board of an Organization Called just Foreign Policy, and that organization is offering a reward to anyone who can give it a copy of the negotiating text of the Transpacific Partnership agreement. Any takers so far . Not so far. So the idea here is that we do have people involved in negotiating process, they have access to at least parts of the deal. So the hope is that someone from good conscience, presumably more than, you know, the hope of getting a big reward, will feel, you know, feel the urge to make it public and, you know, the organization just Foreign Policy im on the board, but i dont play an active role in running it will be happy to then post on the web so that, you know, people across the country can really, you know, in all the countries will have an opportunity to see it. So in the last word here, both of you, the argument is this Transpacific Partnership agreement will ensure a freer flow of goods and greater prosperity. The other side of it really serves essentially what we know about it, the corporate interest. Is that where you come down . Very much so. I mean, this really is a deal thats being negotiated by corporations for corporations and any benefit it provides to the bulk of the population of this country will be purely incidental. Thered be no reason to keep it so secret if it was in the interest of the public. Yves smith, dean baker, thank you very much for being with me. Thanks for having me on. Thank you. During the republican hearings on the meltdown of obama cares website, representative David Mckinley of West Virginia knew what he wanted. I havent heard one of you apologize to the american public. Are apologies not in order . Ive just ive not heard the words im sorry or i apologize. I dont understand why theres not an apology. But, i apologize. I havent heard that from any one of the four of you. He got it. I want to apologize to you that the website has not worked as well as it should. You deserve better. I apologize. Considerate, appropriate, and futile. The apology didnt squelch the partisan tirades or quench the republican thirst for revenge, their outrage that the Affordable Care act, that is, obama care, even got this far. But it did provoke some of us to wonder, isnt it fair to also expect at least a tiny bit of remorse, just a morsel of apology, from the republicans . As nprs astute Health Care Reporter julie rovner reminded us recently. When it became clear that hhs would need more money to build the federal exchange than had been allocated in the original law, republicans in congress refused to provide it. So to get it started, officials had to scrape together money from a variety of other offices. This happened back in the 30s after Congress Passed Social Security but failed to sufficiently fund the board that was supposed to run it. Republican opponents of obama care have gone further. After it passed they stalked it like jack the ripper. In the states, through the courts, all the way to the supreme court, which, uhoh, ruled it constitutional. In last years election when they lost again. But quit . Never. For republicans, this has become their alamo. In july, less than three months before scheduled launch, the speaker of the house, republican john boehner, drew one more line in the sand. Obama care is bad for america. Were going to do everything we can to make sure that it never happens. And yet the darn thing survived, despite the administrations own very serious mistakes. As rovner reported, obamas people naively figured republican states couldnt resist all that cash coming down from the federal government and would decide to create their own insurance exchanges and expand their medicaid programs. Not so. Republicans, it seems, have their principles, and health care for poor people is not one of them. Ideology trumped money. Republicans aside, obama care had its own builtin problem, born of original sin. And some of us have to resist the temptation to say, we told you so four years ago we said the public option in health care, a kind of medicare for all, would be easier to launch and simpler to operate than the Rube Goldberg contraption that came to be known as obama care. Rube goldberg, for those of you under a certain age, was the fellow who designed machines that made simple tasks much more complicated. Back in 2009, when obama first became president , polls showed the public option was a popular idea. Lots of americans were fed up with paying bloated premiums to giant Insurance Companies that charged us for their plutocratic salaries and excessive profit margins. We wanted an alternative. And once upon a time, so did candidate barack obama. Now, if i were designing a system from scratch, i would probably move more in the direction of a single payer plan. But, as president , obama buckled when conservative senate democrats, yes, democrats, threatened to join republicans in a filibuster if his plan included a public option. Then im prepared to move against moving to the next stage of consideration as long as a governmentrun public option is included. The biggest pill among those corporate democrats was industry lapdog max baucus of montana, chairman of the Senate Finance committee. At one point baucus even had advocates thrown out of his hearings. Im sorry. There will be order. Can we have a recess until order can be restored. Want a single payer system. Why do you insist on spending more money when the single payer will give it to us at the price were spending now . Still, obama care made its way through the gauntlet of mercenary senators, predatory lobbyists, and greedy corporations to become law. Rube goldberg would have been a very happy man. His principle, why do something simple when it can always be made harder, carried the day. And by the time it became law, the Affordable Care act was a monstrosity of complexity. Sure enough, on opening day, what the republicans couldnt accomplish happened anyway. Screens froze. Error messages flew. Data was corrupted. The system broke down. And obama care stalled at the starting gate. Supporters gaped at the wreckage of their bestlaid plans, opponents gloated, and republicans, of course, called hearings, which any Opposition Party would have done. But you must note the irony here. The party that had thrown roadblock after roadblock wherever they could and had just shut the government down to stop Health Care Reform now loudly complained that government wasnt working and people couldnt get, you guessed it, Health Care Reform. Apologize. Apologize. An apology. Okay, representative mckinley, you got it. But wouldnt a little humility would be in order here . Democracy is imperfect, and we need to work with what weve got. And what weve got is the Affordable Care act. We also need to remember that, at the outset, big ventures often go awry. Not just in the public sector. Remember when apple introduced the iphone 4 in june of 2010 . Were having a little problem here. Steve jobs couldnt get it to connect to the internet. Embarrassing, but they worked it out. When facebook went public last year a technical error in nasdaqs system delayed the start of trading resulting in a loss to Market Makers of half a billion dollars. And those of you old enough to know who Rube Goldberg was may recall the rollout of the edsel, a Ford Motor Company automobile so awful its name still is synonymous with a costly flop. And lets not talk about lehman brothers, bear stearns, aig, jpmorgan chase. The crash of 08. Beside those calamities, obamacares computer problems pale. Oh, yes, mistakes are made by big corporations and big government. And although i was for Something Else, something simpler and easier to manage, im betting this will get fixed. As for those strident partisan voices crowing over obama cares first bad round, ask yourself if those werent some of the same voices cheering on the invasion of iraq and promising victory would be swift and easy. Ten years. Trillions of dollars. And all those lost and wrecked lives. Have we heard any apology . At our website billmoyers. Com, learn more about americas secret trade agenda and its impact on you and our economy. And remember to join the debate what would you say to president obama about the balance between National Security and the possible killing of innocent civilians . Thats all at billmoyers. Com. Ill see you there, and ill see thats all at billmoyers. Com. Ill see you there, and ill see you here next time. Captions by vitac www. Vitac. Com hi, neighbour tonight, my babysitter prince tuesday is coming over to take care of me. And then were going to school with all of our friends im so glad youre here with me. And, ill be right back is made possible in part by. 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