welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour justice ginsburg suddenly reveals her feelings on the citizens united decision what are they and could they help get the disastrous decision overturned also the military's use drone technology extensively in armed conflicts over the past decade you might be surprised how much they've been used closer to home and the number of americans using meth as skyrocketing as for years what my corporate america have to do with this startling revelation.

and about the rest of the news we return to the citizens united front as we've been keeping tabs on last week the supreme court suspended the decision by the montana state supreme court regarding citizens united basically montana ruled that the citizens united decision did not apply to that state because there was a one hundred year old law on the books that prevented corporate spending in state elections but the u.s. supreme court said sorry montana you have to let the corporations spend unlimited amounts of money in your life just like we've dumped on the rest of the country however the montana case highlight an important issue that may lead to citizens united being revisited by the high court and that issue is whether or not corporate spending in elections gives rise to corruption a charge that justice kennedy in the four other justices on the supreme court ruled in favor of citizens united disagree with that route justice ruth bader ginsburg is now weighing in to challenge the high court's decision she recently wrote montana's experience of experience elsewhere since this court's decision in citizens united versus f.e.c. make it exceedingly difficult to maintain. independent expenditures by corporations

do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption that's because she like most americans can see the obvious that money and politics don't mix well at least if you're trying to keep the public's best interest in mind. but while this is all being shaken out on the ground movement politics continues and it continues in the form of a rally slated for thursday tomorrow in front of the supreme court led by the coffee party usa joining me now is eric pilot filmmaker and co-founder of coffee party usa eric welcome thanks very much for having me great to have you with us what's your take on the massage on this montana decision and do you think that this could be either a silver lining the supreme court could reconsider or be maybe a disaster they might reconsider tweak it back a little bit reduce the heat and take the steam out of the movement to. amend the constitution well we're part of a movement to amend the constitution as well but we're taking our shots with this possible revisiting of the case because there is not just in and we're going spirit

said but i think the fact that kennedy went out of his way to say that it wouldn't create pretty perception of corruption back in the decision in the original decision i think about was on his mind and i do think that he can see the obvious and i think there's a possibility that the court will decide to hear the oral arguments and you know so much is about the horse race of the republican primary and a lot of people are really disgusted with the way that you have these puppets here is putting the front end as you said in your opening segment for the public without really giving them the full guarantee benefield confident that's what that's the the other thing that kenny was concerned about is that we'd lose confidence in our democracy so as that's playing out to have another horse race you know people will pay attention if one person's going to win or the other person is going to win have a new horse race before the public stage to decide whether the montana law one hundred year log to prevent the corporate purchase of democracy should stand and whether or not we can have democracy in the rest of the country i mean that would be a horse race would be extremely educated for the rest of the country and we want to

make that happen you know during president obama's two thousand. alive and state of the union address. nine months after eleven ten months doesn't do it all it was all right a year later was a year later after citizens united he called citizens united and alito you know the several there was this recourse in front of an alito not so not true words like that mouth to them and at the time i saw that i thought you know i'll bet you really believes that i mean i don't think the supreme court justice would would. say something like that to the president during the state this wasn't quite like you know the black eyed little guy yelling you lie out of you know gary. and i don't think he could possibly still believe that and they're making a mockery out of the republican primary and it's republican voters who don't like this is cross the board eighty percent of the public rejects the citizens united decision and so i think that in a tomorrow they're going to be out there at noon we have no idea who's going to

show up this started with an e-mail we got from john boehner of free speech for people can i put this on my blog is really interesting image after months yes also apply to both of them as well as just over from free speech we started from you know to the public and this plot of just started taking off you started bouncing all over the internet and so pretty soon we had a rally on our hands we're going to go see what happens behind this thing you ask me questions i don't really know the answer to because i'm not a political professional i've never been paid for any of this work that i do i'm a filmmaker like you said but the amazing thing is is that it no longer has to be professionals only with a one way communication between big microphones and little consumers are all becoming microphones now and we're having a conversation of our own and even in the republican side they don't like the idea of a few wealthy families and a few multinational corporations purchasing their nominee i think there's a chance for a trance partisan coalition here to change public opinion and make it possible for the supreme court to revisit this just in the way that they've revisited other decisions that they've made as our culture shifted away from separate but equal toward a civil rights movement i think we can in the information age make them move much

quicker and say well there was a time when free speech was so important we would allow corporations to have undue influence over our. it's in our elections but you know we did we were promised the republicans we could keep it as americans famous saying yes and and sometimes the supreme court makes a decision and then with better information with more information they revisit that decision and i think that was implicitly kennedy was saying in the majority decision that's all we want to pounce upon and that's the that's the public in the court of public opinion is that the perception of corruption in this republican primary recently right now i think there is i think you're absolutely right eric thanks so much we were thinking it had it again show up on thursday february twenty third at noon in front of the supreme court tomorrow right here in washington d.c. join the movement to get money out of politics go to coffee party usa dot com for more information. in other news look up in the sky and you're bound to see a few clouds a bird or two maybe a plane but over the next eight years you'll be seeing something else flying in the air drones thanks to

a new law passed by congress our skies are about to open to domestic surveillance drones similar to those drones flying above afghanistan pakistan and god knows where else killing so-called terrorists so why exactly are they needed and who's behind this push for drones above the united states here to answer that question is lee fought investigative reporter with republic report dot org lee welcome back a comment to see you great to see you too what legislation was it that paved the way for these drones. well you know there's this will be f.a.a. authorization bill which is kind of like a catchall bill that funds are being f.a.a. t.s.a. and some other similar authorities but you know hidden inside this bill were lots of new regulations and the part that we're kind of focusing on today is this rule that basically opens up domestic airspace to drones are some drones are kind of benign like you know drones that filmmakers might want to use to film their movies

but a big part of this will be law enforcement and other commercial uses like corporations that want to gather more information from the skies you know for things that they want to sell to people or for other marketing reasons and who's behind this what is their argument for more drones well. a lot of military contractors are behind this because right now most drones that are created are made for the military you know a predator drone that is ubiquitous in the war in terror in afghanistan is made by general comics lockheed martin northrop grumman they make drones and there are lots of other specialty industries proxy aviation is another one that makes the military drones all these companies came together and formed a trade association a couple years ago called the situation for unmanned aerial vehicles and they've become a real force on capitol hill and we did a story showing double lobbying dollars in the last year two years ago that formed

a congressional caucus with democrat and to quell or and republican congressman buck mckeon and they're basically pushing the drone agenda capitol hill but mccain of course is the chairman of the armed services and you know and they've developed a very rigorous and massive really lobbying strategy to get the f.a.a. bill and related last asked. to look just at their lodging strategy it's pretty dramatic i mean we came to our point. oh ok they are up you know to go to you ten this power point yes this this power point basically shows that over the past year it developed a pretty sophisticated client push through this massive expansion of domestic drones i mean they're going to have some estimate say thirty thousand domestic drones flying over our skies the next week ok so here's the question what's what is what is not benign about this i mean we've we had you know helicopters the o.j. simpson slow mo trial you know and time is a big crime you've got the local t.v.

stations have their helicopters there you've got the satellites up in the sky google earth i mean you can see and now they're driving around with you know with vehicles and things you can see people's houses you could see things google is certainly making commercial use of of the ultimate drone these giant satellites up there that can see your street when we have. traffic helicopters and things we were already kind of used to having things in the sky photographing us what's the. worst the george orwell piece of this what what what's the scenario that concerns you well you know if you asked the lobbyists and just how it went they said bit their biggest challenge is overcoming civil liberties and it's true you know we've had a slow loss of civil liberties wait a minute over a hundred in several liberties or overcome in the perception that they're violating civil liberties. it wasn't clear the power point they just listed our civil liberties as one atop challenges so you can take that at all as you well but you

know there's a there's a creepy factor in this where drones whether it's for you know a police department or you know some other private interest can hover above someone's house i mean how do you mark your own private property in the air right if someone can just hover a drone above your house taking pictures of you maybe using infrared sensors to see how many people are in your house i mean that but but the limits to this haven't really been defined so this this squid be the beginning of the end of the fourth amendment and in a way is that what you're suggesting not precisely because i mean this isn't a discussion we had i mean the f.a.a. are after as they should not specifically these are. listen language in it with which by the way but your own industry brags that that lawmakers took their proposal word for word and implemented it into the bill. we there was no serious

consideration there were no hearings there was no big public debate about this dramatic change amazing leave thing so much for being with us and thanks for waking us up on this issue based on speaking to drones the electronic privacy information center epic is looking for signatures to submit a petition to the f.a.a. requesting it conduct a public rulemaking the privacy impact of domestic surveillance drones and go to epic's website at epic that org to sign the petition. just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old until the truth. sets

in i am an old get a friend that i love rap and hip hop music and. he was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without ensuring its place. look look look look look. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

for. your take my take is your chance to send in your questions comments rants and

observations about anything we talk about here on the big picture during my radio show and my chance to give you my take on it one more time so it's called that first comment came to us from steve by our viewer rant why. steve here in salinas california in both the keystone pipeline it seems to me that we use the time and money that they want to spend on the keystone pipeline for use that time and money to develop renewable energy sources we would never need the pipeline and the hope is that we spend the time and money thanks i totally agree with you and in fact let me take it a step beyond that we are we're spending all this time money and effort on moving rapidly moving oil from canada down to the gulf of mexico and no nobody's talking about rapidly moving people around this country we need to take this kind of money and put it rapid transit high speed rail the kind of infrastructure that's actually going to help us rather than this insanity if you so when our final comment of the day comes to us via the viewer red line as well aaron had this to say about

privatizing our prisons. hi there my name aaron i'm a big fan of your show. i'm listening to something and i was thinking about the problem for profit prison systems and i was wondering why does this why does this allow considering that we actually have anti-slavery laws not believe the actual analogy is that with nine hundred thirty nine i'm talking about the forced labor that was done in the south when people were put into servitude by false arrests kept in prison and they made money off them by leasing them out as right those forced labor why is this why did this profit system allowed under those laws and has anybody contested it regarding this. but to the best way knowledge nobody has challenged it on the on the thirteenth amendment of the slavery issue and but the bigger issue here is the commons is the reason why we have government is to protect all of us with the things that we collectively own

and one of those is the least our and prisons are part of our police power my objection to private prisons is that they are taking part of our commons and privatizing it for profit and i think that's well that's it for your take my take the night if you like your questions and comments heard on this segment of big picture listen up we want to know your take send us your comments by visiting the tom hartman facebook page via twitter at tom underscore her or in the chat room on the message boards or through the blog at thom hartmann dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line at two two five three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound off it's all welcome to remember that your comments may be used on the air. just. it's the good the bad and the very very dinero philly is slowly ugly the good ol garia and france both members of the european union have now officially banned the controversy

a practice known as fracking method used to retrieve shale gas deposits as a source of energy fracking has been shown to trigger earthquakes and pollute water and many argue that it has incredibly adverse effects on the environment the banning of fracking in the two nations has helped promote a greater environmental movement all across europe with other nations now considering a ban on fracking while looking into greener and safer forms of energy during a time when france will gary and the rest of europe are facing serious economic challenges they're still conscious of the fact that we need to move away from dangerous and harmful forms of energy and move towards greener and safer forms of energy for the future the bad ricky santorum headed two thousand and eight press and people of faith in politics form santorum lee labeled the democratic party as the woods and said the democratic lawmakers were upon our most primal lost so he went on to say that the party is about sexual freedom us with its own homosexuality it's about sexual freedom so secret the santorum is quite literally scared straight

by homosexuality and has made numerous eyebrow raising statements about gays during the two thousand and twelve campaign just because a party stands up for something to believes in like equal rights for gays and lesbians doesn't mean that it's all about it or that it has a suit crew job to promote social freedom in america let's be honest there are plenty republicans who are all about sexual freedom just ask mute and a very very ugly david koch one half of a gruesome twosome known as the koch brothers was interviewed by the palm beach post over the weekend need of yuko openly flawed to he and his brothers willingness and over. mean ability to basically purchase public opinion and even elections when asked about his fiscal efforts to help wisconsin governor scott walker avoid recall koch said we're helping them as we should have gotten pretty good at this over the years we spent a lot of money was causing we're going to spend more. i actually agree with coke

they have gotten pretty good money into the political arena over the years of destroying the polity power of the people in our democracy the incredible candor with which koch speaks about his plans to interfere with our democratic government frankly in my opinion has no place in our society and it's very very. corporate america has us booked on meth. right now in small towns across america the working poor who've been hit hardest by the second republican great depression are turning to meth to get by either by manufacturing and selling it or just using it to escape it says the recession's are the harbinger of meth addiction as soon as an economic downturn comes meth comes right along behind it in his recent book meth land the death and life of an american small town author nick redding goes to an i

would town of about six thousand people to document how the economic turndown downturn wiped out the local economy and how meth eventually crept in to finish everyone off he didn't go to iowa to talk about math as a singular problem affecting small towns across america instead he went there to show how meth is a consequence or arguably a symptom of an economic breakdown in which the middle class is disappearing and more and more americans are unable to find economic success after the banks there's blew up our economy and corporate america companies like apple or h.p. or amway decided to stash their profits away or invest elsewhere rather than help put americans back to work after all it happened a small small towns all across america actually went into debt spirals small businesses couldn't get loans so they had to lay off workers or closed down altogether now out of jobs people don't. money to spend so other businesses went

under since no one's making money local governments weren't collected as much revenue so they had to cut back on social security services like making sure there are enough cops to crack down on meth dealers are making sure there's enough social workers and counselors to help those who are getting hooked on the meth so small towns across america became the perfect breeding ground for crank and it's at this point the big companies are making the problem much much worse first with the help of lobbyists the pharmaceutical companies have blocked many of the attempts by state and federal governments to restrict the sale of over the counter cold medicines that contains pseudoephedrine the primary ingredient of meth but that's just how corporate america is preventing us from treating the symptoms of the disease and not the actual disease itself which is an economy we heap structural problems we have a long history of blaming poverty and the social ills that come along with it and those who are in poverty it's like there's we sit we we say we think that there's

something genetic that predetermines people to failure or that they naturally have some sort of moral failings that make them more inclined to take drugs when a wave of irish immigrants came to the american eight hundred fifty s. after the potato famine they were forced into the slums on the east coast to divide work they lived in poverty which led to violence and crime which in turn led to many social fear is suggesting that irish people were defective they were actually books written about the irish gene i mean they're more likely to commit violence then decades later when a wave of italian immigrants came to america and were forced to start of the economic bottom in poverty same speculations sprang up maybe there is an italian gene a mafia gene to me but more likely to engage in criminal behavior after the first generation of irish and italian immigrants each subsequent generation worked their way into the economy found opportunity and even found success and to date the idea that there is something genetically wrong with italians or irish is it sir. there's

something wrong with poverty not the people in poverty as richard wilkinson and kate pickett over at the equality trust in the u.k. uncovered nations that have higher wealth inequality and less significant portions of the pop of the population living in poverty also have more social ills like drug abuse and guess where the united states ranks here's the chart as you can see the health and social problems based on inequality the us is way up here at the top of inequality and we're also way up here at the top in terms of the index of health and social problems and there's a hole in this whole spectrum of them from from drug abuse to child abuse to health problems of mental illness crime on and on to go so the answer to meth abuse is jobs and more economic equality a strong middle class something corporate america seems to have a stake in denying us from investing in corporations putting corporate shills in

office to lobbying to kill stimulus legislation like rebuilding our infrastructure to offshoring manufacturing jobs and committing americans to the unwinnable race to the bottom corporate america is playing an active role in killing off the middle class and thus is responsible in large part for the ongoing math epidemics. there's nothing genetic about poverty in america as long as we have a long history of pointing to the idea of poverty as a moral failing it's not and history shows that when those same people have an opportunity to enter the middle class the epidemics vanish we need a national manufacturing policy a brand new trade policy we need to enforce the sherman antitrust act to break up with big companies and give people a chance to start small family businesses and compete with the transnational corporate giants and we need to move wealth down the ladder by rolling back the reagan tax cuts this whole mess all started when reagan took a prosperous nation thirty years of incredible prosperity after world war two and

using his voodoo reaganomics as his vice president george herbert walker bush called it turned our country into a wasteland economically reaganomics needs to be reversed now we need to kick corporate government but corporate power out of our government and dump the last vestiges of reaganomics so that we can finally late the soil in which to grow a new middle class instead of growing drug addicted at the democrats. that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our web sites at top aravind are called free speech dot org and archie dot com you can also check out our two you tube channels there are links at tom hartman dot com our entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and you can visit tom arbonne dot com to download the audio podcast of our daily to three radio show and we have a free time arbonne i phone and i pad app at the app store you can also send us

feedback on twitter at tom underscore arbonne on facebook at underscore her blogs message boards and telephone comment line at tom arpanet cop and don't forget tomorrow thursday noon on the supreme court steps there's the flash mob that the coffee party is putting out one of many actions all across the country movement politics moves politics get involved show up participate democracy begins with you get out there get active your it will see the world. you just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old so if you tell the truth. i make sense and i meant to get

a sense that i was that make us music and. he was kind of it yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you see it's a place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so it's more likely you think you understand it and then he lived something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charming welcome to the big picture.

i think a lot of i'll get a real headlines with none of them are saying let me live in washington.