so the thing was fast tracked no hearings on privacy the bill mentioned nothing about the civil liberties implications of filling the sky with flying robots. that's right they just fast track to bill with no chance of privacy advocates to explain why they're against robots tracking your every move and how we should properly prepare and adjust the rules on this kind of thing now an article from the republic report might explain why that is lobbyists so you turns out of the association for unmanned vehicle systems international which is a drone trade group has doubled its lobbying expenses in recent years and as you can see from this graph here from two thousand and nine to two thousand and ten the association spent a little over one hundred thousand dollars on lobbying efforts two thousand and eleven that number skyrocketed to two hundred eighty thousand dollars and extra financial support helped those lobbyist ensure that lawmakers voted favorably for the use of domestic drones their investment paid off quite nicely because for valentine's day the f.a.a. bill was signed by president obama so that's it now it's law obama completely

overlooked all the concerns and he followed in congress's footsteps so once again seems like at the end of the day it really does all come down to money and it's clear that defense contractors like northrop grumman lockheed martin and others who are all part of this association for unmanned vehicle systems seems like they know how to keep washington in their pockets i mean while i guess that you should just start keeping an eye on the skies because this bill means that somebody is going to be keeping an eye on you for a price. now according to data from the department of veterans affairs ten thousand combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder flooded into v.a. hospitals every three months in two thousand and eleven overall that pushed the number of patients afflicted through above two hundred thousand and that data came out at the end of november that was before the last troops left iraq was before we see tens of thousands of u.s. troops begin to return from afghanistan this year and the next so it's an issue that isn't going away anytime soon and it's one of the troops and their families and doctors and employers are all struggling with this is the kind of wound that

has no physical scars but are some army doctors actually downgrading p.t.s.d. diagnoses to save money and investigation has been launched after a disturbing memo was made public where a madigan army medical center psychiatry has said that a soldier who retires with the p.t.s.d. diagnosis could eventually receive one point five million in government payments and he claim that the rate of such diagnoses eventually could cause the army and the v.a. to go broke he continued by stating that psychiatry is have to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollar and have to ensure that soldiers aren't being quote rubber stamped with diagnosis of p.t.s.d. so what does that say when the health of those who served it's being measured by dollars discuss this with me is jim hansen retired special operations master sergeant and military blogger at black. jim thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess you know thanks for drawing our attention to this story now before we get into some of the larger implications of the bigger statistics here can you just

give us more details about this pacific incident i mean was this just a one off or i guess we should say that it's good that somebody noticed and was disturbed by what he had to say well fortunately it was noticed i'm not convinced it's a one off feeling it's a much more systemic problem what this was there was a group joint base lewis mcchord who had the final say as to p.t.s.d. diagnoses and he's really a diagnosis of p.t.s.d. which is a lasting illness that requires therapy it requires a long course of treatment can't. the government money his point was that maybe you know it's not worth you know maybe we need to look at that in a way that it's more the bean counters view rather than we over these people we sent to war you know the best treatment we can get them regardless you know they didn't choose they volunteered for the military they did that volunteer to catch p.t.s.d. so i think it's a situation where these guys were definitely almost bragging that they had saved the government money by downgrading the diagnosis from p.t.s.d. to exile disorder now i'll tell you right now you have exhausted about

a few things you don't have any interest about this and that that's not the same as p.t.s.d. p.t.s.d. is a debilitating illness and it needs to be treated a lot more seriously and terms of the thinkers that he throws out there to. truly make a one point five million dollars if you have p.t.s.d. when you when you get all your benefits and i don't know how long they amortize that over you know we're really going to take in and see how long the soldiers are going to live and look at the benefits they get over the course of a lifetime ok do we do the same thing with amputees you know do we save some lose a leg that the services are going to get for the rest of their life should be measured you know based on the dollar amount not based on the care will still wrong way to look at things and we owe our troops better than that all right so let's talk about this right i mean i think you know a lot of people close to her from p.t.s.d. and do you think that it's at least progressing in the sense that people are now are more willing to talk about it you know what's the hardest part is the hardest part is coming to terms with that maybe the fact that you need help you need some you need to see somebody you have to admit that you have this problem of this

disorder there was a stigma for a long time there was a stigma that warriors don't admit they have any weaknesses or that you can't say that combat affected you and then that's baloney you know i think we've got to the point now where at least it's something that's accepted i mean my girlfriend has p.t.s.d. you've met her she looks fine she's been on the show she looks fine if you didn't know you would never occur to you just from looking at her that she has debilitating fly. back she had been so bad this last week she took a fall and hit her head got a concussion all right she was in iraq at the point in time she was at war in her mind during that flashback to say that someone like her does not deserve the care that we promised them when they signed up just because we're trying to save money budget cuts are one thing ok let's argue about you know how many planes to build how many ships to build let's not argue about whether or not to take care of people we sent to war and so what kind of treatment would you say for the most part you know are they at least advancing how do you how do you treat somebody that has

p.t.s.d. you know that's one area where i think there has been a lot of work has been done that we've learned about it the vietnam veterans we let them languish we let them just rot on their own now there are there are excellent programs that are therapy there psychiatric help the psychological help counseling the problem is again that cost money and when you've got people looking at budget cuts right now. prioritizing the accounting you know balances versus the well being of the troops you've got a mistake and i will commend the army surgeon general lieutenant general hoar who she brought twelve people from joint base lewis mcchord who were affected by these doctors who are making these bad rulings to walter reed to be rediagnosed i hope she's taking a look at the rest of the program as well because i'm well aware there are other folks who have been affected the same way they've been downgraded their findings have been not line of duty there but a lot of things to minimize the number of actual cases and that's more let's talk about that what are some of the ways you said this every now and then they just wanted to diagnose it as anxiety or what's the other thing that they try to claim

at this including prior service you know they can say that people came into the military and may have had something that existed prior to service that's ridiculous you know p.t.s.d. is a symptom based disorder if you didn't receive treatment for seek treatment for it before you entered the military you didn't have p.t.s.d. no matter what else happened to you so that's the kind of things should not come into account there are rules the military has that say you have to assume they were sound when they join the military and that. if they've got p.t.s.d. having been stoned when they join the military it was line of duty and that's one of the areas that needs to be looked at and i hope they take a better look at it and that's one of the reasons appreciate your shining a light on art so you do you know specifically or individuals have actually had this happen then too because you said that you don't believe that this is necessarily an isolated incident that it's not just one that's being investigated and might lose his job that it might be more widespread in more cases without a doubt that i'm aware of personally people talking to us. we have

a lot of people who write on the back channel and let us know that this is not an isolated incident to joint base lewis mcchord it's happening at walter reed it's happening at other regional medical centers and it's something the army does take seriously if you have to keep money in the budget to treat the people we sent to war and who were wounded emotionally they have chunks of their minds have been taken out they may not have lost a leg the chance of their minds are missing and emotionally they deserve the same treatment as those with visible injuries so they need to take it seriously and do the right thing it's as i mentioned you know the last year for about the figure as to how many people every three months were coming to the v.a. this is before all the troops came back from iraq this is before we end the war in afghanistan do you think that the problem is going to grow exponentially with get worse as as more of these people come i don't know if it's going to be exponentially i think it's something that i will give the military plenty of credit for paying attention to you know there's a lot of outreach work being done and there's a lot of people saying it's ok get help seek help the question now is are they going to follow through on the treatment of those people who come up and say they

need the help and god willing the creek don't rise they'll do the right thing and help these people why i think that you know. if the american people were to hear about stories like this i think on a more broad level if this was all over the news today which i think it deserves to be then people would be outraged outraged they would be incredibly incredibly mad but it's not and so you wrote you on your blog today that your line to take this to the highest levels high as you possibly can you want everyone to write into you. there are congress looking at this we have a couple of arrows in our quiver that i hope i don't have to fire but if the right thing isn't done there will be action taken by combat veterans in congress who take this very seriously i think the army leadership is engaged in this and i think they're going to take a good look at it and push down hill and say evaluate these things properly look at these people and get them the care they need and treat them the way we promised them if it doesn't happen. no question about it is there any question in your mind

and this might sound awful to you but we've been talking a lot of on the show lately how there is evidence where you have some of the military leaders deceiving congress to see even the american people specifically when it comes to what success or what progress might look like in the war in afghanistan do you think i ever take the same stance and want to downplay you know injuries or p.t.s.d. or negative effects i think to some extent there has been a desire i don't know if it came as an official policy but there's been a desire to minimize the number of cases so that it does not seem like as big a problem there's always the high focus on the suicide rate you know and when you look at the suicide rate how many of those were untreated cases of p.t.s.d. so i think there's a there's been a longstanding wish that it was a smaller problem than it is i think right now there's no place to hide you know we're not going to let this go on the bottom line like you said the american people are not going to stand for our wounded warriors being treated with one ounce less of respect than they earned so i think the end result will be well. through

whatever adam we have to to make it happen our general thanks so much for joining us tonight and good thing there at least have this investigation going now thanks to. our taking a quick break when we return you said i read it and one private company is offering to buy public presence but only with the assurances avail of the ninety percent fall. by very scary guarantee of having to supply criminals for the return. of people calling like you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the it's about clinton as you can hear behind me loud explosions.

i mean. i get it gave her a. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry is a big issue. our

guys it's time for you said it i read it right take time to respond to my brilliant and engaging viewer comments from facebook twitter and you too we've got some to say i listen now first of all responded to viewers the watched our monday hangover segment on obama's budget let us say that people are very optimistic charles gabriel comments on facebook and said jake and matt right on point i totally agree

with both of them i'm glad to know i'm not the only one that thinks obama isn't charming any more with his rainbow unicorn solutions about fixing the budget or the country for that matter now is clearly mr gabriel isn't a fan of obama certainly not anymore what's even more striking is that even our viewers who like the press. it's plan seem to have lost faith in the government's ability to execute it stephen commented on r.t. dot com i really like obama's budget plan i have no faith that it will pass and even if it does i don't think we'd see any of it being used properly honestly though what objection can you have against it oh god damn liberals want to hire teachers tax the filthy rich and repair our infrastructure oh god no so it's really something we see people from both ideological spectrum have no confidence in our political process and not just the president but the whole she bang and i can tell you i understand the sentiment because working here in d.c. is made me more cynical than i would like so my view as i feel your pain now is this you are on the other hand i don't feel your pain have

a lucero watched our happy hour a segment from monday where we spoke about rick perry using rick santorum as fear of radical feminists and he said i knew to send these three are to radical feminists back to the kitchen so on the say one thing i prefer it when the men cook for me and if me being an independent woman with a show bothers you that you have plenty of shows hosted by old white men to choose from instead and finally jeremy mullins said on facebook just found your show my r t app for i phone really enjoyed the guests on the show i heard no reprints and tony shaffer and other shows they were excellent as usual keep up the good work so for us we just like to say welcome to the live show community and glad that you found us and for those of you who are fans of the show make sure that you download the r.t. app unlike most networks r t streams all of its programs live so you can watch us anywhere on your smartphone so spread the word that's of my rantings today i'll be back with more as usual next week. hey business owners out there the f.b.i.

wants you to join in on the fight against terrorism and don't worry they have some really friendly tips to help you spot the terrorists from your normal customers do you own a coffee shop or perhaps a newsstand if so you should be wary of people paying in cash that's right people who pay for small purchases in cash like coffee or gum apparently that's a big red flag big time now of course those customers could just be using cash to pay for small items because it doesn't really make sense to take out your card for a dollar purchase or because they simply don't have a credit card but the f.b.i. sees a cash payment as a way for you to cover your tracks blended with the normal folk without leaving a trace on those that i've made a lot of purchases that i guess are suspicious in my day according to this logic now for all those electronic shop owners out there f.b.i. has ways that you can do your part to they urge business owners to be wary of regular customers with missing fingers chemical burns or weird body smells and those physical deformations could be a sign that your regular customer moonlights as

a bomb maker that or they could just have physical deformities or be oh but for now the f.b.i. wants shop owners to be wary of them and an internet cafe proprietors don't think that you're getting out of the fight against terror so you should be careful of those that are overly concerned about their privacy and that is the exact language in the f.b.i. pamphlet mildly concerned i guess that's cool overly concerned a big no no and attempting to shield your computer screen from other patrons well that's a sure sign that you're suspicious of course that patron could be embarrassed about something on their screen maybe they don't want people to see the amount of money in their bank account any number of very normal non terrorist like behaviors that we've all probably done before but to the f.b.i. that is a signal here now a suspicious person all of these community terror fighting gems were included in twenty five business specific flyers handed out by the f.b.i. to businesses and the actual flyers were posted online by the site public intelligence as part of a research project. and much of what's listed as suspicious all these fliers some

of it makes sense for example the flyer warns papal workers to watch out for groups practicing kidnapping or furtive you hoddy training materials it's it seems pretty obvious with even more obvious is that the f.b.i. wants everybody on board in the fight against terror not just in airports or public transportation they want you me everyone on alert at all times watching their neighbor their fellow coffee shop patron and so if you see something say something even if it's just a body paying for cash or paying with cash for a cup of coffee so just say goodbye to any sense of normalcy everyone this is your post nine eleven world. now we've spoken a lot about private prisons on this show the massive lobbying efforts in some cases helping to craft legislation like arizona's as seventy the campaign donations to lawmakers in florida to outsource state prisons what they're trying now goes above and beyond the corrections corporation of america the nation's largest operator for profit prisons has sent letters to forty eight states offering to buy up their

presence might be tempting in times of budget crisis right but get this in exchange the company is asking for a twenty year management contract plus an assurance of the prison would remain at least ninety percent full houses all according to a copy of the letter the huffington post got its hands on so what could the effects of this deal be how many possible ways could it go wrong joining me to discuss it is david wolman contributing editor at the daily coast and there in chief of congress matters david thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess just right off the bat have we ever seen anything like this before i mean the sims like quite a big business move when you write a letter to forty eight states. well that's a pretty sweeping net that they've cast there that's just about everybody i don't think i've ever seen anything quite like that just sort of this wholesale offer to privatized an entire industry across forty eight states now that seems to me to be one of the more ambitious endeavors i've ever seen can you tell us more about corrections corporation of america i mean how is it that they became the largest

company in this for profit prison industry that is cash and the right time. well it's an extremely lucrative business and as you said the offer that they make is very tempting especially now this particular robber that they've made but the business model essentially is based on you know the very largely republican and conservative idea that almost anything can be outsourced even things that used to be considered core government functions like imprisoning so in your society you know that that's something that i think is fairly new but yet they've made it a real killing in trying to take these problematic areas off the hands of state governments which are facing budget crises everywhere and in some cases these are manufactured budget crises and in some cases manufactured so that they can pass measures that are ostensibly for cost savings that essentially just outsource government functions to private industries very often private industries that have

contributed hinson lead to the election campaigns of the legislators who pass these privatization enabling acts so it's a very lucrative business when you can entice legislatures into essentially devoting a large chunk of the state's budget to paying you especially if you're going to lock in a twenty year contract with a ninety percent occupancy rate as they would have to call it they run these things like hotels so it's very easy to make a large amount of money if you can have a state government programs to give it to you yes very easy all right so it seems like there are obviously a lot of problems here will get into this required ninety percent occupancy and all that but even the idea of signing a contract for twenty years does that take a lot of power away from the state what if this company is not doing a good job they're not running this prison affectively area locked in. well i'm sure that there are skate clauses which maybe is the wrong phrase to use for

a private prison group but i'm sure that there are some is that the state can have recourse but that doesn't mean it's an easy thing to do or even that it's going to be the best thing to do even if the company isn't performing up to standards when you've turned over the administration of your penal system to a private operator and then find out that they're not doing a very good job now what would that even mean not doing a very good job does that mean hundreds of escaped murderers i don't know but if the state decides that they want to take these things back that's an enormous problem and part of the big problem with privatization both of prisons or any other industry is what do you do if it's not working out and how much does it really cost to get the thing back under state control no one's ever had to deal with that and no one has any idea what it might cost to do it but penal systems and correctional systems are pretty expensive undertakings to take that back from a privatized group and make it

a state function again could prove almost impossible so they might well have to let a group like corrections corporation get away with almost anything rather than undertake the expense of taking the reins back now this part about the prisons having to be at ninety percent i guarantee that they will be ninety percent fall just seems absolutely crazy to me right i mean how can you possibly guarantee that you're going to have enough criminals and last i guess does this mean that the local law enforcement agencies are going to have to start having quote has i mean can you just imagine how many ways this can go wrong when you guarantee to fill up prisons yeah well it's first of all i mean it runs entirely counter to what should be the government interest in incarcerating its citizens here we want a government that's going to work towards lowering incarceration rates less crime less people serving time more people who do serve time rehabilitated so that they don't become recidivists or middle. we want those jails to empty out and that makes

for a difficult business proposition if you're trying to privatized these things which is of course one of the reasons why it's not supposed to be a private function it's supposed to be a state function and the state is supposed to take care of it that they don't want to doesn't really enter the picture but there are a million ways that things can go wrong in a million ways that the state might find itself under extraordinary pressure to meet these quotas we don't know exactly what happens if they don't get to a ninety percent occupancy rate but presumably it costs the state money in some way and so you really are going to find yourself having situations where the state in order to avoid some sort of financial penalty perhaps is finding that it needs to either deny parole to people who might deserve it imprison people who don't deserve it who knows where these quotas come down on is it on local law enforcement to lock people up in prisons you're talking about people who have been sentenced long term not jails who are holding people who are not so you're really talking about weaning

i guess on state judges and say let's put people away for a longer let's ignore things maybe around the margins maybe the evidence isn't so good maybe the aggregating aggravating factors in a crime aren't there but let's lean toward the maximum on these things anyway you know people might be ok with that being tough on crime but you know we have to at least be sure that people are being put away for money that's horrific you can't be allowed out that's a really scary thought so as far as you know have any states actually taken them up on this offer yeah i know that they were trying to use ohio as this shining example because guess what we bought a prison there for seventy two million dollars and to me it just seems like that's not even really all that lucrative for a state if you are billions of dollars you know if you if you're like california right and you have maybe a twenty billion dollar budget deficit then the seventy two million is that really going to take so much. well probably no i don't know though you know you don't want

to turn your nose up at a large amount of money anywhere you can get it so long as it's not something that just runs counter to what you're supposed to be doing as a government i mean someone could offer a large amount of money to give away other core government functions and there are some that i assume that even some republicans will walk away from but it doesn't seem like an awful lot of money to give up the kind of control over the kind of function we're talking about and if you ever have to take that back who knows what it's going to cost we have no idea i don't think that there are any other states that have taken up the large scale offers i know there's the ohio example i don't think anyone's had a chance to react to this new letter. in which they request this guarantee maybe now and then i'm sure with the terms of ohio's deal exactly are but you know i mean there are certainly no shortage of privatized prisons that are operating around the country and you know the unfortunate part is as i said they sort of operate like

hotels so while they may never have demanded a ninety percent occupancy rate in so many words they do have as part of their contract the discussion of what the occupancy rate is no need to be added i will read it again but i thought here president all right dave thanks so much for joining us and i think you. i will take a quick break we'll return on senators fighting against domestic abuse protections for immigrants gays and transgendered and he's our full time when i don't have the hour american ingenuity at work shuttles for those on the walk of fame and linsanity has reached a fever pitch so was one of the trademark of course all the back. people calling what you said for free and fair elections.

and we're still reporting from the summer as you can hear behind me loud explosions . i mean. good it gave me. a. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charging welcome to the big picture.

are you guys it's time for tonight's tool time award ads and i were giving it to g.o.p. lawmaker chuck grassley he wants needs award for his stance on.