welcome back to the big picture i'm sam saxon. coming up in this half hour american prisons are bursting at the seams and legalizing marijuana would help relieve the pressure so why is the federal government so reluctant to embrace this harmless recreational drug and it's not a daily take american had journalist extraordinary james o'keefe is out today but see why is journalistic prowess or lack thereof is helping to expose a greater problem facing americans today. in the best of the rest of the news if your job in tennessee is enforcing marijuana

laws and it appears you can smoke all the marijuana you want yourself without consequence that's the case with daniel elks the director of tennessee's alcohol beverage commission which also plays a key role in marijuana law enforcement basically the story goes like this police went to alex's home with really tragic news that her husband had died in a car accident they got there and noticed the back doors open so they went in to make sure there wasn't an intruder in the house or anything. else was at home at the time but the officers found pot in rolling papers on her kitchen table ironically right next to her marijuana eradication taskforce sticker report was filed but nothing came of it charges were pressed the marijuana wasn't even confiscated and alex still has her job cracking down on pot offenders it was all swept under the rug. now look this is a sad story the woman just lost her husband and its son clear of the marijuana was

even hers she shouldn't be arrested and she probably should lose her job the cops actually did the right thing in this case but the problem is that same sort of compassion that was afforded to alex the director of tennessee's alcoholic beverage commission is never afforded to the millions of other americans who get busted for the exact same crime and have their lives ruined as a result especially in tennessee were just one gram of marijuana just one gram can lead to a year long prison sentence. so doesn't this case highlight yet another reason why the war on drugs is a complete failure and needs then now bill piper joins me now he's the director of national affairs with the drug policy alliance bill welcome thank you for to have you on the show here so first off what's what's your take on this story compared to the way police normally act with the sort of kind of violence and brutality when it comes to average marijuana offenders and there's definitely a lot of hypocrisy and corruption in the war on on marijuana and we do see two

sets of standards for law enforcement and citizens and politicians and citizens you know all that you know when the kid of a popular politician gets arrested they're usually let go or they get a slap on the wrist where you know the average american is going to get jail time. had their doors kicked and had their dogs shot in their hauled off and they had this conviction that follows them around for a lifetime and it can be legally discriminated against in there was a teenager who was just killed in the bronx route just he had just said he was possessing marijuana walked home in the police followed him and they shot him i mean those were the circumstances were but they pretty much shot him in his bathroom over marijuana here yeah and it does happen you know there's eight hundred thousand marijuana arrests every year well let's look at the big bigger picture here so this past october gallup asked the question this americans do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal or not fifty percent for the first time fifty

percent said yes that's up thirty eight percent since the poll was first taken in one thousand and sixty nine and so far here's where we stand when it comes to states that have the criminalized marijuana right here's the states that decriminalize marijuana and when it comes to states that have legalized medicinal marijuana this is where we stand and a poll shows that seventy percent of americans favor medicinal marijuana. this is pretty good news but at the same time. president obama's kind of reversed his position on this is taken a much more aggressive posture toward medicinal marijuana you know he's had the department of justice on these threatening letters to states that are thinking about passing medicinal marijuana laws you know what do you make of this what's what's the big picture on the move to to legalize marijuana really in america you know it's not clear when the president first ran for president he said all the right things on the campaign trail he promised to end the bush administration's

assault on on medical marijuana and he did that in his first year but over the last year the tide has started to shift and they're getting much much more aggressive and you know president obama is now worse than bush on this issue far where he's actually it's not clear you know has he changed his position that it's politicking i mean do you think of this election year comes around as one of your soft on drugs in that it will you know once he gets to this election maybe he'll go back it could be he could also just not have control of the justice department and to say you know as he flip flop it may be you know is he just weak and can't control you know is own people it's really and it's really unclear and everything that's coming out of the administration on this issue is not good enough so consistent it leads me to believe that it might not be just robotics right in beyond there's a there's a lot of other forces at play a lot of other headwinds of play here and i see two major lobbying industries working against marijuana legalization i see the private prison industry like the corrections corporation of america which you know goes to these alec. write

legislation to make harsher drug penalties so that people get thrown in prison because they turn a profit off every person that that sort of person i also see alcohol and tobacco companies who you know don't want the competition. just how powerful are they in this fight and how do we push back against them really they're powerful probably more powerful because law enforcement benefits directly. they're basically the more the more people they arrest for marijuana the more federal money they get and so they have a strong incentive and so at the state level you see the private prisons and law enforcement and then also the prison guard unions you know in california the most jobs yeah they need that they need the jobs and so it is about largely about money and it's almost entirely of money we have the highest prison in the world. we spend a lot of money on this drug war tons of money what we hear all this talk about the

deficit you know everybody the republicans are screaming about the deficit pretty much congress is paralyzed because of the deficit how would just legalizing marijuana address the deficit well first we'd stop spending billions of dollars a year arresting people and warehousing them in prison and then if you regulated and taxed marijuana like alcohol you'd raise billions of dollars a year that we used to pay down the debt or it could go to social services or education or you know or what have you and so right now we're basically throwing. taxpayer money away on an you know a fellow war on marijuana when we could be regulating it intact in california is trying to do that they now have a ballot measure that's going to be on in november it's i guess similar to the ballot measure that was on in two thousand and ten that just barely lost and this is going to legalize not decriminalize but actually legalize marijuana and tax it. what's the latest on that in do you think it stands a better chance of passing this year because it is

a general election year it will be higher voter turnout. more people who you know might not be political junkies will get to the polls and and perhaps push this thing over the edge i mean do you think that certainly is definitely better and you know the voted on this two years ago it won among people under the age of forty which is a lot of people under the age of forty don't come out in off year elections and so you know it could be on the ballot in november in california it's almost certainly going to be on the ballot in colorado and washington state so we could have three states voting on legalization in what could be a high turnout you know race and the polling you know is pretty good it's certainly not a guarantee and it's going to be a lot of forces that are going to try to stop it but you know even if it doesn't win this year it's going to win this is years ago now in four years and it's hard to stop at this point and there's a lot of action to keep an eye on there bill piper thanks a lot for coming on the thank you note great insight into this drug war goes all

the way back to richard nixon and it's a proven failure it's time to accept marijuana for what it really is an effective medicine and from what i hear a decent recreational drug here's tom state. last week a montana man was arrested for having a sixteenth of an ounce of pot barely enough to roll a joint. and montana is generally considered a fairly conservative state so this guy's facing drug possession charges but his case never went to trial the reason why is amazing the judge in the case could not see a jury willing to convict the man in pretrial interviews this is before people knew who he was what the crime was how much body had anything one potential juror after another one after another after another said they would not be willing to find someone guilty for only having a few buds of marijuana in their possession eventually because he couldn't find jurors the judge was forced to call a recess acknowledging there was no way he could put together

a fair jury during that recess a plea deal was worked out and the man essentially got off without admitting any guilt the judge in this case dusted ishant claimed that in his thirty years on the bench thirty years on the bench he'd never seen anything like it i say let's hope we continue to see more of the same every year at least fifty thousand people die in our country due to alcohol fifty thousand in the history of our nation and even the two hundred years before we officially became a nun the united states of america us the nation know how many people died from a dose of marijuana or an overdose or a massive dose zero. five hundred years on this continent not a single person and it's tens of thousands of years before that native americans nobody has ever died from plot we have this bizarre double standard in our country that we have legalized and even embrace to a certain extent the use of alcohol but we velo five pot and it's users it makes no

sense alcohol causes long term dementia it corrodes your liver and it can cause death when overdosed pot does none of those things it may affect your short term memory but all the while you're high i mean both drugs produce a mild intoxication and marijuana side effects pale in comparison alcohol so if any of these two drugs should be illegal which should be not to mention the enormous medical benefits of pot benefits the fifteen states and washington d.c. have now recognized by legalizing medical marijuana really people pot has killed or those who've been locked up for its possession and had their lives forever altered because of it when i was a kid a friend of mine went to prison for pot he was a good friend it destroyed him it broke him when he came back he was never the same again. two grams and then our crew criminal justice system ruins your life this is

insanity our prisons are overpopulated and more than ten percent of all the offenders are guilty of pot related offenses if we legalize this we immediately solve this problem not to mention the tens of billions of dollars that can be saved by not informed by not enforcing marijuana laws in our nation's war on drugs a black hole of financial waste an ineffective law enforcement in november prop nineteen failed in california it would legalize small amounts of pot for personal use while support for legalization is growing it's not quite strong enough to take on special interests corporations who have a lot of money at stake to ensure the pot isn't legal in the meantime i think we should pursue the strategy of a few dozen jurors in montana next time we receive that jury summons in the mail think of it as a chance to exercise some political activism let's all take a stand and refuse to convict people for simple marijuana possession it's our duty as a jury of peers. after the break what is a hack journalist of

a republican conspiracy to undermine democracy have in common to find out in tonight's delegate.

and it's time for tonight's the good the bad and the very very pious this vicious lee ugly the good fifty thousand petitioners last week u.c. san francisco medical center denied jesus navarro a kidney transplant why because he was an undocumented immigrant navarro even had insurance to pay for the operation but the medical center still refused because for some reason america would just let people die if they weren't lucky enough to be born here or wealthy or just healthy enough to buy health insurance another some

good news week later more than fifty thousand people signed an online petition on move on dot org to push the medical center to give the transplant let's hope the possible listens and saves this man's life. the bad fox news is the five yesterday the five made some startling yet commonplace for the network comparisons between president obama and a drug addict while talking about the president's decision to accept super pac money here's what they had to say. yes to understand super pacs are evil only when it's done by republicans ok that's the first rule it's kind of like it's like obama's a drug counsellor you walk into his office and seem doing coke and sixty two says i'm trying to keep up with my patients here's what it is because i'll give you a better analogy one it's a guy that's very very good and then a guy spends the better part of two years saying he's against drugs he hates drugs drugs killed kids got drugs are bad and then the next day he says you know what i'm

opening up barry's pot and coke and oreo. isn't that clever i wonder how the five feel about themselves when they know that it took five of them to fill the time slot once occupied by just one guy glenn beck but again those are some big crazy shoes to fill moving on to be very very ugly for our county florida teacher leslie rayner rainer's a teacher at the blanche high school and is currently being investigated by the local school board for referring to a haitian student in her class as quote a little chocolate boy and they quote chocolate that nobody wanted rain or defended her choice of words by saying those words are enduring because her husband calls her sweet chocolate. but it appears that rainer has a history of racist remarks against haitians in two thousand and ten she told her students that haiti was suffering as a country because they were made a they made a pact with the devil something she probably heard from pat robertson and rainer

made one of the haitians shouldn't stand by a trash can in the same day and say to the class quote that's where they belong and quote referring to the haitian community yet somehow rainer still has a job and it's unclear which race of people she plans to discriminate against next on her lesson plan and that's very very ugly. james o'keefe is at it again in case you don't know who he is here's his mug shot that's when o'keefe was arrested for trying to wiretap u.s. senator mary landrieu phone becomes to be a journalist and was promoted by fox news o'keefe is down to is that a number of fake journalism stunts is just to advance far right wing ideology

basically took on n.p.r. with a very deceptively edited video to make it look like an n.p.r. executive was making critical remarks against the republican party in his official capacity but the damage was done in that executive plus n.p.r. c.e.o. vivian schiller resides they also messed up acorn too with some videos and that's basically how o'keefe rolls he throws blatant propaganda out there and lets the right wing media pick it up whether it's true or not is not a journalist he is a hack and now he's at it again releasing a new video to advance the myth of voter fraud this time. then what you're about to see here goes to a voter registration center in minnesota goes to several of them to obtain voter registration forms for fictitious people people like timothy t.-bo and thomas brady to prove that someone can register fake people or celebrities or jesus loving football stars to vote without and i did take

a look at the video and minnesota's voter registration form you can check mark a box that says you don't need an id a social security number or a driver's license if the person walked up to election officials in minnesota and inquired about registering tim thibeault and tom brady devote is it possible for a third party to register a group of voters for example to tivo so you have one person it's almost very obvious brady can't come and gone through depression you can't complain if you are sort of. so later in the video keep trying to prove that one someone like timothy t.-bo is a registered the met voter can send an absentee ballot again without an id in place of fraudulent vote but o'keefe is trying to advance with this video is the need for voter id laws those same voter id laws that are being passed in places like wisconsin that will disenfranchise millions of eligible voters who don't have

i.d.'s in the next election mostly democratic voters but is bred for even points out over the broad blog dot com this is just another case of journalistic hackery by a key. first off as friedman points out what you keep doesn't illustrate in the video is that there's already a law on the books the help america vote act two thousand and five it's called that requires anyone who doesn't register to vote in person someone like timothy t.-bo to show their id when they show up at a polling place to vote for the first time so that's covered us for that second issue of mailing in absentee ballots without an id that's a crime all right but it's a crime that these voter id laws can't stop either and it's a crime that pretty much never gets committed only point zero zero zero six percent of votes cast according to a study by the brennan center for justice are fraudulent lightning striking people happens more frequently but while voter fraud almost never happens despite what

discredited hack journalists like o'keefe want you to think election fraud on the other hand happens all the time and there's one political party that seems to always be behind it and you can guess which one it is it's the subject of tonight's deleted. publicans aren't just targeting democratic fundraisers like unions in their quest for one party rule in america they're also targeting democratic voters as think progress pointed out over the weekend there are twenty two states considering bills or have already passed bills to restrict voting rights by requiring people to present a photo i.d. or proof of citizenship at the polls in other words disenfranchising tons of voters publicans contend that the legislation will curb mass voter fraud a claim has been widely proven to be for lack of a better term or a loss of scene one garbage as the brennan center for justice at new york university pointed out in a study in titled the truth about voter fraud allegations of widespread voter fraud

however often prove greatly exaggerated. these claims of voter fraud are frequently used to justify policies that do not solve the alleged wrongs but that well could disenfranchise legitimate voters and that's exactly what republicans are doing as in see acorn. in reality voter fraud is virtually nonexistent back in two thousand and four george bush's justice department launched an investigation into voter fraud they were very worried about. and convicted a mere eighty six people of some sort of fraud out of one hundred twenty two million voters in other words republicans are chasing a problem that at most exists in just point zero zero zero zero seven percent of the voting population on the other hand unlike voter fraud election fraud is rampant like when about eighty thousand people in florida were barred from voting

in the two thousand election bush v gore because republican stooge katherine harris the secretary of state contracted with a company in texas to scrub her state's voting rolls of models entirely african-americans and those democratic voters whose names just happen to be similar only similar to convicted felons who lived in the state of texas or when the wisconsin republican party and the koch funded group americans for prosperity engaged in voter caging last year to keep college students and minorities from voting and thus pave the way for scott walker's gubernatorial victory or one republican secretaries of state are elected officials around the country order particularly in two thousand and four small numbers of voting machines in mostly minority and democratic districts leading to waits in lines in the rain or snow in many cases of up to as much as twelve hours while at the same time in the white mostly suburban wealthy republican areas. there was a surplus of machines an average weights were ten to fifteen minutes election fraud

a happens nearly every election year and is by far away mostly perpetrated by republicans several years ago one of those republicans conservative activist paul weyrich laid it out for all of us rather bluntly. how many of our class have what i call for growth good government they want everybody to vote. i don't want everybody to vote elections are not won by a majority of people they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now as a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the only populace goes down. it's simple when more people vote when our country acts more democratically the democrats tend to do better at the polls that's mainly because democrats look out for working people or the ninety five percent of us who are millionaires and billionaires republicans on the other hand are perfectly content

sticking up for the richest of the rich screw everybody else back in two thousand and eight indiana and acted restrictive voting laws and what we saw was elderly voters college students and low income people almost the democratic voters turned away at the polls by republican lawyers because they didn't drive cars in the us didn't have a driver's license i'm guessing republicans would argue these people should have brought their birth certificates with them just like president obama should always carry his birth certificate his pocket you know just to make sure. in the most blatant attack on progressive voters new hampshire state representative gregory song introduced a bill that would prevent college students and members from the military from registering as voters in his state of new hampshire if they are only in the state to attend school or serve in the military the new hampshire speaker of the house william o'brien defended the bill by saying kids are voting liberal voting their feelings with no life experience at least he put

a bluntly for all of us to understand this is a war against liberals and of course in wisconsin koch brother lapdog scott walker was able to slip a restrictive voter law through his state legislature while most of the attention was focused on his other assaults against public unions after all he has to figure out some way to win reelection in two thousand and fourteen. all together the twenty two states considering these photo voter photo id laws account for two hundred sixteen electoral college votes that's eighty percent of the votes necessary to win the presidency of the united states when the norm is corporate spending thanks to citizens united and union membership steadily declining that other twenty percent shouldn't be too difficult for the republicans to pick up. you know our elections should not be a partisan issue and the fact that they are shows just how deep the subversion of our of them of our democracy goes we need public funding of elections and we need it now. and that's the big picture for more information on the stories we covered

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the violence in syria escalates by the world is left guessing about what's actually happening as opposition forces contradicting claims over just how many people are dying. the e.u. gets the shakes over its own embargo on arena well as officials expressed concern you were a kid and being the loser. pakistan's foreign minister tells r t that america's drone strikes are pushing new recruits towards the region's militant groups the new report claimed scores of civilian deaths in the u.s. led attacks.

the russian capital you're watching r.t.i. marina joshua welcome to the program now the u.n. says it plans to team up with the arab league and restart a monitoring mission in conflict a war in syria that follows russia's song going calls for the international community to support moscow in efforts to mediate a peace deal the kremlin's can damning all sides of the syrian conflict for instigating violence while saying president assad is ready for talks with the opposition in syria government forces are shelling several areas including the flashpoint city of homs mask it says it's conducting an anti terror operation there but activists are accusing the government of a massacre and say hundreds of civilians have been killed over the past week syria's and there are a foreign media blackout making their reality on the ground hard to confirm the opposition is making that an easier as it argues over just how many people are being killed reports. from the syrian observatory of human rights it's one of the most widely quoted sources of syrian casualty figures but it's not.