[Soledad O'brien, Cnn Anchor:] STARTING POINT starts right now. And our STARTING POINT this morning is talking about millions of dollars in earmarks from lawmakers and how they may have personally benefitted from those earmarks. One of the lawmakers on the list will respond to those accusations this morning. Plus, three states, 70 delegates on the line. GOP caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota, a primary in Missouri. Mitt Romney is looking to solidify his front-runner position. Rick Santorum, though, really could be the dark horse in this race. And there is no let-up on the Syrian regime's deadly assault on it's own people. Violence escalated overnight. The U.S. embassy is now closed. Russia's foreign minister is now in Damascus, and he is meeting with President Assad. Also, Catholic leaders are in a battle with the White House over birth control. Health care law mandates employers provide it, but Catholics, some of them say it's against their fundamental beliefs. We'll talk to both sides this morning. All that and much more ahead as STARTING POINT gets underway right now.
[O'brien:] Can you come in and fix Russell's audio? Welcome, everybody. "Unbelievable," that's Kathy's play list. She's a contributing editor for "The Washington Post" and also the founding publisher for "Capalano" magazine which I have been in a time or two. It's nice to have you. Riehan Salam is the co-author of "Grand New Party." And Russell Simmons, mogul, founder of Def Jam and CEO of Rush Communications is with us. Good morning. Welcome. Let's get underway. This morning we're talking about this new investigation coming to us from "The Washington Post." Nearly 50 lawmakers who helped direct earmarks to projects that potentially helped their own property or immediate family members, they say it benefits the public, not private interests. One of those who is on that list is the Republican Congressman Joe Barton. He is a Republican from the great state of Texas. He joins us now. It's nice to I think he is standing by. Can you hear me, sir? OK. It looks like they're getting him ready. So we'll stand by for Congressman Barton in just a moment. The other thing Congressman Barton is going to discuss with us, he is a Newt Gingrich surrogate. And as you know, as we head into the various contests, which no delegates will be awarded today, he is saying that his candidate is still in the race. Russell joked this morning that none of the Gingrich surrogates would talk to him, which is not the case. We'll be chatting with him. It's interesting to see the big question there is, does he have the money to stay in the race, of course.
[Russell Simmons, Ceo, Rush Communications:] Can we comment on that?
[O'brien:] Of course you can. Jump on?
[Simmons:] All American politics is adding up to be. Does he have the money? I spent a lot of time on this for years. More recently Occupy Wall Street has brought this to America's attention. And then the greatest example of it is this Republican primary. It's all money. Our democracy is for sale. I've been work for a very long time, and now we have a constitutional amendment that's being discussed. A lot of religious leaders, African-American religious leaders have joined forces with some unions and some of the Occupy Wall Street guys and create something called Occupy the Dream.
[O'brien:] There's a Catch-22. You're not in the game you get outspent and then you lose.
[Simmons:] It's 96 percent of the money have the money. So instead of working for the people who elect you, you end up working for the special interests that paid you. And so the question is does Gingrich have the money and does he have the relationships and does he owe the favors. Therefore, if he does, maybe he could win. You notice what just happened, Romney spent five times what he spent in Florida, and he won.
[O'brien:] You have president Obama said President Obama criticized the super PAC money and now he has his own super
[Pac. Reihan Salam, Co-author, "grand New Party":] There's a wonderful new book called "Rule and Ruin," which is the history of the Republican Party pretty since the 1950s through the 2000s. A big part of the story is moderate Republicans tended to be supported by wealthy backers. And then as you regulated the campaign finance system, as parties depended more on small dollar donations, you actually saw an increase in ideological polarization and decrease in them working together to solve various problems. So the story here is not so much that money is good or money is bad. It's that money flows in the system in different ways and a lot of the regulations meant to put the little guy in the driver's seat actually backfired, because back then you had a lot of backers who was like, we want to kind of have a broad-minded, big tent party, and so we're going to support people. And then candidates instead spend all their time chasing after donations. That dynamic has dramatically changed. Similarly on the Democratic side you see that labor organizations after restricting soft money donations to the parties, they have much less influence, whereas now upper middle class, social liberals who make small dollar donations have much more influence. I wouldn't say that money is good or bad. I would say are the regulations actually serving their initial purpose or have they proved counterproductive?
[Simmons:] It's bad. I mean, Ben is a person, Jerry is a person, but Ben and Jerry is not a person. Corporations are not people. It's ridiculous, the discussion. We should have public funding. We should have a democracy where each person has a vote and a vote matters.
[O'brien:] What do we do now?
[Simmons:] Each person's vote matters.
[O'brien:] I love how the panel takes off without me. Hi, I'm here. The question is, what do we do about it now, right? We followed Newt Gingrich as he was campaigning through Iowa and then into New Hampshire and so forth, one of his issues was, I would like to not have to run ads. I would like to be positive but I'm being hammered on the other side. Ergo that's going to determine what my reaction is.
[Simmons:] The same amount of money should be public funding.
[Salam:] Eugene McCarthy ran for president against LBJ. Nobody thought he had a hope. He ran an antiwar campaign fueled by a small handful of wealth guys that said LBJ is dragging us into the Vietnam War and we don't like it. But when you have a public financing system the incumbents, the people all right in office, the parties that already exist are able to game the system to work to their advantage because they set the laws. They set the regulations.
[Simmons:] Except they're already in office and made the deals, and except they already have money flowing. They have 94 percent of the time they win and they have the money, and that's what incumbents do. The idea that there is some kind of fair election now when it's all up to money is unrealistic.
[O'brien:] Let me turn to our Kathy and I are just going to start I can see how this morning is going to go. Wow. No coffee for you, sir. All right, let's get to congressman Joe Barton of Texas. Good morning, sir. Thanks for being so patient. We were all audiological difficulties. Thank you. I want to talk to you about "The Washington Post" investigation. It's all into earmarks. They identified 50 members of Congress who directed money to projects that were either very close to properties that they owned or connected to their families. And you were on that list of 50 lawmakers talking about $3 million deal to widen a part of U.S. 287, I believe. It's near where you own a couple of homes. Was there a correlation between the fact that your home was there and the fact that this deal was done?
[Rep. Joe Barton,  Texas:] Well, I've been in Congress since 1985 and I have been working on U.S. 287 from course can that Texas up to Ft. Worth, Texas that entire time. I live in a small town in Dallas called Ennis which is a community of approximately 15,000 people. Every home in Ennis, Texas, is within two or three miles from 287 or the bypass that goes around it. And I have been successful over time in making 287 a four-lane highway from Corsicana up until Ft. Worth. That's totally on the up and up process. I would invite you and any of your CNN viewers that want to come down to Texas and look at the U.S. 287 in my congressional district. I think you will see that it's a straight-up project. And my homes that you referred to are in residential parts of Ennis, Texas. I own no commercial property nor do I have options on any commercial property anywhere, not just in Ennis, Texas, but anywhere along the length of that highway.
[O'brien:] One of the complaints about the earmarks is they're not transparent. Do you push for them to be more transparent?
[Barton:] Of course, we're not doing earmarks in the House of Representatives right now. But when we did do them, we had to sign a sheet, and I posted it on my website, and we also sent copies down to the local press. So we've been transparent for, I think, for almost the entire time that I've been in Congress when we were doing them.
[O'brien:] Let's turn around talk about politics in terms of the caucuses that are today. Newt Gingrich surrogate is what your role is on that front. How do you think it's going to go? You know, some people are backing away from predicting that Mitt Romney is going to have a clean sweep of the contest today. Do you agree with that?
[Barton:] I think Governor Romney with his cash advantage, which you all were talking about in the earlier segment, is going to do well. I think former Speaker Gingrich is going to be competitive. I think he's really gearing towards Super Tuesday, which is the first Tuesday in March. Newt is the clear conservative change agent. His entire career has been about changing America in a conservative way. I think ultimately the Republican primary and caucus voters are going to pick him over Governor Romney because Newt is more conservative and he's been dedicated to doing that for a longer period of time.
[O'brien:] Congressman Joe Barton of Texas, thanks for talking with us. Again, my apologies for the audio problems earlier this morning. We appreciate your time.
[Barton:] No problem.
[O'brien:] Turning now to Syria. Slaughter in Syria nearly 100 more killed in Homs. The Russian foreign minister arrives in Damascus, and he'll be meeting with Bashar al-Assad trying to end the violence. Anti-government activists are growing more desperate though. Here's what they're saying.
[Unidentified Male:] The entire world should be ashamed of what's happening here. Everybody is just silent and looking at us being slaughtered every moment for no reason, just for wanting our freedom. This is too much, for god's sake.
[O'brien:] That is a terrible clip to listen to. Jill Dougherty is live at the State Department. Jill, first of all, talking about that clip, there are many people suggest that Syria is spiraling into civil war. Is that the expectation at this point?
[Jill Dougherty, Cnn Foreign Affairs Correspondent:] I think you would have to say that, Soledad, because you look at the situation right now, both sides are arming. And that is one of the problems. Diplomacy hasn't been able to stop that. So you have to look at the options. Could you do military action? Well, President Obama already said at least at this point that that is not an option. And many people who look at the situation say, look, this is a very different deal from Libya where they did have military action. It's much more complicated. So what's the U.S. going to do? They're going for, of course, more sanctions, talking with the international community outside of the United Nations to put on the pressure. They're also going to put pressure on Russia by calling them out on the fact that they are providing their weapons and other countries providing their funds. Soledad?
[O'brien:] And yet the foreign minister has arrived now in Damascus which means, what exactly? Russia obviously scuttled the Security Council's efforts to support the opposition.
[Dougherty:] Right.
[O'brien:] What's that meeting about?
[Dougherty:] Well, the meeting, you know, is essentially to do something, to try to get resolution of this. But one of the problems is, I was just reading a comment by the Turkish prime minister, who said if you look at what happened at the U.N. and the action there where Russia and China blocked things, he calls it a fiasco. And what he is saying is it's being interpreted in Syria as a green light to do essentially what Assad wants. So the prospects of something coming out of that are not very great.
[O'brien:] Jill Dougherty for us this morning. Thank you, Jill, for the update. Look at the headlines. Christine Romans has those for us. Hey, Christine, good morning.
[Christine Romans, Cnn Anchor:] Good morning, Soledad. Dozens of mourners, many of them strangers, gathered in last night in Washington state for a candlelight vigil honoring the memory of Charlie and Braden Powell. And disturbing new details from police this morning. They say their father, Josh Powell, hacked his two young sons with a hatchet before using 10 gallons of gasoline to blow up their home Sunday, killing both boys and himself. More than 40 states have now signed on to a settlement plan that would help millions of homeowners whose mortgages underwater. Under the plan America's top banks would pay up to $25 billion to settle all the government lawsuits. That money would then be used to bring relief to struggling homeowners by lowering the principle they owe on the mortgage. But several states, including New York, Florida, and California, still not on board. They're worried about their own investigations into the banks and giving immunity to bad actors. That's all holding things up right now. Greece teetering on the edge of default this morning. Leaders of Greek's political parties met through the night trying to reach agreement on austerity measures in order to get a $170 billion bailout from the EU. Three hours ago a nationwide, 24-hour strike began with demonstrators vowing to close Greece's ports, close its tourist sites, and disrupt transportation. "Minding your Business" this morning, U.S. stock futures are trading slightly lower ahead of the opening bell. Growing concerns about Greece fixing its debt problems and avoiding default, those concerns and a deadline for qualified for bailout weighing on markets so far this week. And a source close to M.I.A. tells CNN the entertainer messed up. She feels awful about flashing the finger during her Super Bowl appearance, halftime appearance with Madonna. The source, who is not authorized to speak to the media, says M.I.A. was simply amped up, adrenaline rush. She was not trying to send a message. She was just in the zone, I guess, Soledad.
[O'brien:] That makes no sense. Russell, you know her. You're our music mogul. She gave the finger during the half time performance and now the source was saying she was amped up?
[Simmons:] Maybe it's her normal performance.
[O'brien:] She gives the finger to her fans?
[Unidentified Male:] Imagine how exhilarating it is to do something a little transgressive in that setting.
[Simmons:] The idea, just the idea of the whole system, to say, you know, young people, that's what they live for. So maybe it's something she's done in other performances and it just was natural.
[Areu:] Natural?
[Simmons:] It's natural to put their finger into the audience.
[O'brien:] But it just all of that just worries me. It worries me. All right. Still to come this morning on STARTING POINT, outrage over Obama Health Care Reform. Religious hospitals now required to cover birth control. This is going to start on August 1st. They say though it's against their beliefs. We're going to have a conversation with both sides coming up next. But President Obama originally said we should not fund Super PACs, the groups that can spend endless money to