welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour private corporations are eating our towns where a common good devoured what's left for breakdown in just a moment also in tonight's geeky science segment conservatives love to rail against same sex adoption i'll tell you why they should start listening the science for us and it looks like george bush and dick cheney may want to get a good lawyer and ideally take what's going on around the world and why we need to start pressuring our president to throw bush and his cronies in the prison. the state of florida is up for sale republicans in florida want to sell off their

state of ohio as bitter and they don't want you to know about the state senate in tallahassee is considering legislation that will allow lawmakers to privatized critical parts of the commons and outsource government duties to private corporations that could include everything from selling off public parks turning them into corporate chemical factories or handing over state prisons to corporations like c.c.a. which lobbies for harsher drug penalties and that you're a profit off each person they incarcerate and here's the real kicker about the legislation it allows the lawmakers to make these deals behind closed doors in complete secret deals wouldn't be made public until the contracts are already signed eliminating any chance of voters being able to weigh in or protest their community being sold off. so while private corporations are eating up our communities republicans are the ones spoon feeding let's take

a look at the consequences of legislation like this one in florida and other similar bills being considered around the nation let's take a trip to democracy bill here's our democracy bill and it and this is how it's supposed to work we have the city government here and collecting taxes and then those taxes are used to to manage the commons you have the public education we have our public school public fire police station fire department public utilities public prisons and you know of course people living in their homes . the people in the people here basically have a say in how all these things are managed the quality service the price of service if they don't like the way the city hall is managing it they can throw the bums out because it's a democracy they have some say in it but this legislation in florida would change all that it would take our commons common the common areas are these things we own collectively and sell them off to the fat cats in the transnational corporations

now there's a lot of money to be made in the commons if these fat cats can just get this kind of out of the way and take over the public schools or the police stations or the fire station the public utilities there's a lot you know public education goes private your school budgets get gutted they break up the teachers union they bring in religious curriculum teach whatever they want private schools it gets very expensive so what happens to poor kids are forced to go to the last remaining public school. and that as a result of that the standards start falling and then they said then they say oh i see we told you so it's it's a terrible terrible spiral this destructive both to the school and the children fire departments go private we actually saw this recently in tennessee your house is on fire too bad you didn't pay or seventy five dollars annual fee for fire

service two houses in tennessee have now burned down with the fire departments there and are watching as a result of similar circumstances because the people whose house was caught on fire had paid for the service privatized the police station l o blackwater when this actually happened down in new orleans after after hurricane katrina private utilities get cornered republican tillett as they go private and they corner the market and then the corporations i mean how many power lines can you have coming to your house how many water lines going to have come into your house we're also going to get the stuff these are natural monopolies that is jack the prices up and cable for example even which is still a marginally profitable business the united states we're the i say is pay anywhere from two to six times more for cable services and for internet services than they do in most european countries because those countries they they require competition they don't let these giant corporations. merge everything down to just

a couple of companies and destroy competition and prisons private privatizing our prisons can you imagine that well it's actually happening and the residents of democracy will end up getting screwed i mean what else can we criminalize they'll be saying hey how about wearing loud clothes or drinking let's create you know worked great back in the thirty's with prohibition it was really good for law enforcement being a lot of money put a lot of people in jail. so basically as you can tell i think that you know the commons here public schools or police or fire public utilities are our prisons and it goes beyond this i think that there are other things should always be in the hands of we the people through the city hall that this should be the barrier between the giant corporation the predatory corporations that you know just their interests their legal interest their required interest is to make money out of this

stuff and that's why you know we don't run government like a business you run government like a government because the goal of a government is to provide a high quality of life for its people is to make sure that the commons are protected that the people's will is done and the the goal of corporations to make a profit there's nothing wrong with that but there are separate functions i just find it totally bizarre when i hear people you know remember george w. bush jr i got an m.b.a. dick cheney's got an m.b.a. we're going to have the m.b.a. business be a presidency and we're going to run this country like a business oh no you know the last thing you know. so why would florida say let's let's privatized this stuff and let's do it in secret and stood in secret and not not even tell the people i don't get here to answer that is neil aspirate he's the host of the conservative radio show truth for america and author of the book conscientious conscientious equity he'll welcome back to the program. tom thanks

for having me so why does government republican governor rick scott hate democracy . well i think that's a huge exaggeration let's face it what happened here is that you had the florida legislature wanting to privatized the prisons makes perfect since save the florida taxpayer forty million dollars then you have an activist judge with a political agenda erecting barriers to this decision so the legislature is kind of going around this to try to come up with new laws to be able to save the florida taxpayers forty million dollars and have a much more efficient system and look florida is a pro-business state we have low taxes here why do so many people want to come to florida we have so many people wanting to come here because it's a it's a state that's very efficient that's trying to create jobs and it's a state that's easy to live in by keeping taxes lower so if we can privatized certain aspects of our state government to help the florida taxpayer why should we

do that and because late because their monopoly is israel there's a very very there's a very simple reason why you shouldn't do that because these are parts of the commons for a reason the commons are the natural monopolies with if you have your prisons for example and you privatized them there's no place else to go for prisons and so at that point that the private corporation the c.e.o. so say you know i'm only making five million bucks a year i want to make fifty million bucks here out of a quarter million bucks a year like that guy who runs a health insurance company steven absolutely and all of a sudden the price goes up and the state now has a contract and they've got to pay i mean we've seen this all around the country or they start cutting back to the point where the idea of rehabilitation in prison is just a total myth and when the people come out of prison the public interest is no longer served by rehabilitation instead you get people who are damaged and on rehabilitated and they're being inflicted on the community. well you know i

disagree with that i think that the private industry can run the prisons very well and by the way the state will give them a sort of time frame to do it and then they go back to get in a bit it's a competitive situation if they don't do their job someone else will win it the next time around someone else is going to build a city on them if that one hundred million dollar infrastructure priz come on neal you know they and they keep that and the fire in the arm of the contractors who do a good job and look and think our analysis the u.s. postal system i mean is that not a bureaucracy u.s. postal service or as you know one of the last of i should you have u.p.i. for money they give us some money for providing the same sorts of services providing the same sorts of services u.p.s. doesn't deliver first class mail and the fact that you can say you can take a letter in alaska have a deliver to new york city for parole in the neighborhood of fifty cents i mean that's amazing what the post office does and that they do it with every single house in america every day five days a week six days in losing billions of tax they're all a day they would be making a profit right now if during the bush administration in two thousand and six they

had the republicans had not put in a poison pill piece of legislation that said that the post office over a ten year period has to be has to come up with five billion dollars a year to pay for the retirement health benefits of people seventy five years from now it was pure poison pill they would be profitable right now and they were profitable before i say i say keep the u.s. post office but privatized them i think we can privatized many things on the federal in the state in the local levels in the taxpayer will be paying little i thought he had lot of constitution don't you know that the constitution sets up a bit you know says congress can establish post office and in fact the only rationale that the federal government the dwight eisenhower the republican president had for building a national highway system was that the constitution says that we should have roads to facilitate the postal service. and we're finding many roads now that are being privatized wice so why should we want the private sector participate because i want to pay to use the road and it's not only government bureaucracy bureaucrats that

love this country we all love this country american small business you cannot love this country shouldn't we stream what are you the one thing. what do we want to excuse me if we love this country shouldn't we strengthen it should we be strengthening our commons rather than what was he doing going into private enterprise so that's where i tell you that we tarried in part in a price free enterprise that strengthens our economic commons anymore is that people into government that's not the commons anymore. this is why i think for example health care should be part of the commons and you try to take on your insurance company you can't you can't call the president of the insurance company and raise hell but if you if every other civilized country in the world if you don't like the way your healthcare system is run you can you can call your member of congress or parliament and raise hell with them or vote the bums out we should have a say in the health of your tom the american people spoke very clearly they don't want socialized medicine we don't want to be canada we don't want to be the u.k.

why does everyone in the world want to come to our medical facilities why do they all want to go to the may actually i mean there's there's airplanes where we live we have a bridge have a major the i am going to your health care isn't business in the united states right now if people go into going to southeast asia for for for cosmetic surgery going to mexico for dental care and going. but in any case deal we're out of time. i'm sorry is a great discussion thank you for talking with the privatization is marked by a shift of power and control from government to corporations corporations also have a great deal of influence and control over the lobbying industry here in washington d.c. and looking at the congressman that are about to retire this year they're about to hold a lot more influence tell you about that right after this break. when

the one hundred twelfth congress adjourns twenty five members are going to be retiring from the elected posts the notables along the cropper senator bill nelson the democrat from nebraska and senator jon kyl the republican from arizona the most powerful guys the k. street lobbying for us are now aggressively hoping that these people these twenty

five retiring members of congress walk through the revolving doors as a quote as a retiring class this is a very valuable class a lot of these members are marketable and will be welcomed by k. street with open arms this is what i've been adelir mccormick group adds a lobby for. the lobbyists are right now holding mock drafts like drafting. athletes and things only in this case it's drafting politicians are retiring lawmakers can make up to a million and a half bucks a year lobbying of the three hundred fifty two retired congress member since one thousand nine hundred seventy nine percent have gone on to become lobbyists many members of congress retire and then they're quick to say i'll never come a lobbyist i'm not going to go over to the outside of washington politics for example former connecticut senator chris dodd when he left he swore i'd never be

a law does he said no lobby and no lobby in verbatim quote guess who is now the head lobbyist for the motion picture association of america the head guy out there championing sopa and pipa we need to close this revolving door somehow we've got to figure out a way to say it's just that it's the same thing with the general leaving the military and going to work for the giant defense contractors and knowing all the time that they're in the military that if they buy a lot of big airplanes and tanks and things they'll have a really good job at the airplane tank company when they leave and we've got the same thing with our legislators we need to figure out a way to close this revolving door that been a lot of efforts over the years to do so and the main thing that's been standing in the in the way of this the supreme court so again move to amend corporations are people money isn't speech including the money of lobbyists and the money of ex members of congress and ex members of the military close the revolving door check out move to amend dot org.

just. it's the good the bad and the very very good and crow radically ugly the good. workers of walford's patisserie after the abrupt closing of brawl spits history in chicago it was december workers were given final paychecks only to have them bounce similarly they were illegally denied sixty days notice or severance pay after a legal battle and carefully organizing together the workers of the patisserie have finally received some of the money they're owed under federal law from the previous employer and while this is a start workers are adamant about getting the rest of what they're legally owed and working closely with the workers' rights group to accomplish this goal in today's political landscape or unionization is under attack the workers at ralf's patisserie show us the power of coming together to fight for what's right in the

world. the bad arkansas republican representative steve womack at a recent town hall meeting in his home state womack was asked by constituent kelly eubanks about his recent attacks in the program program eubanks is a college student with two jobs and two kids and lies on pell grants to help fund education. and congress and roll back thanks kelly grants are a bad idea he told you banks that it wasn't the federal government's job to pay for education in the u. bank should join the military to pay for education just like he had done i guess womack in visions of military bait up of just the poor in america who can't afford to go to college who cares about educating kids as long as we have more tanks missiles and warships will be just fine all right representative walmart. and a very very ugly rush limbaugh on yesterday's show limbaugh argued that unlike president obama mitt romney has not lived like a king so he put. romney has not flown all over the world on the federal

government's done romney has not yet lavish parties and concerts on the public stone. romney has not lived like a king on other people's money. and sees limbaugh's confused as usual romney is the one who made his wealth through corporate greed romney is the one who dodges taxes like the plague takes advantage of loopholes on the federal government's dime romney is the one who believes that three hundred seventy four thousand dollars in one year's income is change president obama grew up in a middle class environment and has worked his way through his entire career without the aid of a rich daddy and corporate capital unlike romney who was born a millionaire nice try limbaugh that's very very.

you know there's been a lot of talk about gay marriage and gay parenting in the news lately public and presidential candidates particularly rick santorum argued there's no way that a same sex couple can properly raise a child however science says santorum is full of well santorum in fact not only is it not true that gay couples are bad parents recent research suggests that gay parents may actually possess parenting talents astray parents simply don't have and as a result they make better parents. marcus marcus bachmann just exploded a two thousand and ten review by new york university and the university of southern california found absolutely no difference between children raised in heterosexual households and gay households and a paper published in the two thousand and seven american journal of ortho psychiatry found that of forty six adults interviewed who were raised by gay

parents twenty eight indicated that they felt more open minded and empathetic than others who were not raised by gay families at the goldberg a psychologist at clark university in massachusetts and the lead researcher in the study concluded the gay parents tend to be more motivated more committed than heterosexual parents on average because they choose to be parents that's because unlike heterosexual couples same sex couples don't usually become pregnant by accident and are therefore more prepared for and even enthusiastic about the challenge of parenting further research shows these same children are just as strong at social functioning social performance and other life success skills as are the children of heterosexual couples today there are over one hundred thousand kids right here in the united states of america in need of adoption waiting for adoptive parents meanwhile there are over two million gay couples who have

expressed an interest in adoption. so let's cut out the nonsense let's listen to the science and give these kids a good home. when someone commits a crime one of the police officers prosecutors and judges looking for to make their case. and fashion they want to hear the perp say i did it so it's case closed let's move on to the consequences well when it comes to war crimes committed by the united states government we the people got that confession and we got that confession from criminals at the very very top george w. bush himself confessed to authorizing torture on television when matt lauer asked

him about mohammad back in two thousand and ten. they say he's got information i said find out what he knows and so i said to our team are the techniques legal and a legal team says you're see or and i said i will tell you this using those techniques saved lives my job was to protect america and. and it will use this technique on three people captured a lot of people in these little three we gangs you want information to protect the country and. it was the right thing to do as far as i'm concerned so that's not just a confession that's an unapologetic confession it's bragging the way cons talk to each other in the prison yard bush is number two dick cheney also confessed on television last. in your view we should still be using enhanced interrogation yes should we still be waterboarding terror suspects i would strongly support using it

again if circumstances are gross where we had a high value detainee and that was the only way with getting to talk people call it torture you think it should still be a tool yes yes torture again and again and again as much torture as it takes here of the two most powerful men in america for eight years admitted on national television that not only did they authorize a form of torture that we as a nation tried and executed filipinos for doing to our soldiers in the spanish-american war and we tried and executed japanese for doing a world war two and both of these american war criminals so they do it again if they could according to the geneva convention waterboarding is torture and according to our own laws it is like the detaining treatment act of twenty two thousand and five in the military commissions act of two thousand and six waterboarding is explicitly against the law it that's exactly what bush and cheney

did and we have their confessions on videotape. but nothing is happening no police outside of bush's ranch in texas actually now he's live in a fancy community no criminal investigation prosecution of bush and cheney is not on attorney general eric holder's agenda and even before he was sworn into office back in january two thousand and nine president obama nixed any hopes that these men would be held accountable here in the united states. i don't believe that anybody has both the law on the other and i also have a belief that we need to look forward as los as opposed to looking looking backwards but that doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law that they are above the law but my orientation is going to be to move. someone who has blatantly broken the law but the president is still moving forward with out an investigation and as a result our nation's commitment to torture under the bush administration has not

just become a national embarrassment it's now become an international problem a french judge announced tuesday that he wants to visit get mo and personally investigate allegations of torture and rape made by three former french inmates who served time in that facility he's officially said a request to u.s. authorities all the better the three men making the allegations were arrested back in two thousand and one along the afghanistan pakistan border and sent to get no where they were tortured for years before being sent back to france to face trial and eventually be released and earlier this week a spanish judge reopened an investigation into the bush administration war crimes including torture and british officials now are investigating a cia rendition program that may have involved torturing libyans. so it looks like a decade of war crimes is finally catching up with us and yet president obama still

refuses to hold one person accountable he refuses to tell the rest of the world that america condemns torture and to prove it by prosecuting the war criminals who authorized and the worst part about it we you and i were letting him do it it's not up to president obama to prosecute bush and cheney and it's not up to some french judge or some spanish judge or some british investigators it's up to us we've learned recently what happens when we speak up when we get organized and when we get loud what happens is that the oil barons lose the trans national media corporations fold the lobbyists or expelled the corrupt governors get recall when we speak up we can't what we want and it's not too late to speak up louder and demand that bush cheney rumsfeld by the e.u. the whole rest of the torture is gang go to prison for war crimes is the only way we can write this terrible long done not just against those who are waterboarding

but against our nation as a whole president obama may want to take the political road here like gerry ford did pardoning nixon's crimes and bill clinton did ignoring reagan's crimes but it's our duty to force him down the road to justice and thus get this nation back on track let's lock these guys up. that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our websites of. free speech dot org and. also check out our two youtube channels or looks at tom hartman dot com also you can check out all the way through to the speed bag and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active tag your it occupies something suitable. wealthy british style it's time to. go.

to the. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy in cars a report on our. web wars a global hacking group cripples the web sites of the white house and beyond a series of attacks on major u.s. internet pages to avenge a growing crackdown file sharing services. arab league observers wrap up their much criticized mission to syria prepared to deliver their report as the syrian opposition beats its drums in favor of military intervention. and london ramps up its efforts to bring the scottish independence bid to an unsuccessful and as northern nationalists look to exit a three hundred year old union in favor of an oil rich future.

a.t.m. in the russian capital you're watching our. welcome to the program of a global hacktivist group anonymous has hit some of the most prominent websites in the u.s. including those of the white house the f.b.i. and the ministry of justice major film and music companies have also been targeted tax come. into a federal raid on the massive file sharing service. which has around fifteen million daily users the website bosses have been arrested and are now facing prison sentences the move comes hot on the heels of a mass blackout of thousands of websites including with a pedia in protest against conover szell new web control laws washington hopes the bills will be approved by lawmakers to curb illegal downloading and protect copyright but critics say this will lead to censorship of the internet well to talk more on this.