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 a 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're being used closer to home and the number of americans using meth as skyrocketing as yours what might corporate america have to do with this startling revelation. in the best of 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 one hundred year old law on the books that prevented corporate spending in state elections but the u.s. supreme court said now 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 namely to citizens united being revisited by the high court and that issue is whether or not corporate spending in elections gives rise to corruption and charge the justice kennedy in the four other justices on the supreme court ruled in favor of citizens united disagreed with justice ruth bader ginsburg is now weighing in to challenge the high court's decision she recently wrote on tennis experience and experience elsewhere since this court's decision in citizens united versus f.e.c. make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. it'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 a public special interest in 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 side 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 the 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 ginsburg said but i think the fact that kennedy went out of his way to say that it wouldn't create to prevent the perception of corruption back

in the decision in the original decision i think that that 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 that or 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 frontmen as you said in your opening segment for the public without really giving them the full appearance he didn't feel confident that's what that's the the other thing that kenny was concerned about is that we 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 have a new horse race before the public stage to decide whether the montana law one hundred year law to prove 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 there be extremely educated for the rest of the country and we want to make that happen during president obama's two thousand. a love of the state of the

union address. nine months after eleven ten months doesn't do it all right a year later is a year later after citizens united he called out citizens united and alito you know the several there was this recourse in their front of alito said not so not true words like that mouth to them and at the time i saw that i thought you know i'll bet he really believes that i mean i don't think that a supreme court justice would would. say something like that to the president or in this to this wasn't quite like you know the iraqi dual guy yelling you lie on the very next hour. and i don't think he could possibly still believe that and they're making a mockery out of the republican primary and this republican voters who don't like this is across the board eighty percent of the public rejects the citizens united decision and so i think they're in a tomorrow they're going to be out there at noon we have no idea who's going to show up to start with an e-mail i got from john boehner fast of free speech for people who join can i put this on a blog is really interesting jeff comments yes also apply to both of them as well

as just over from free speech we have started from you know to public and this blog to started taking off or just sort of bouncing all over the internet and so pretty soon we had a rally on our hands we're going to go see what happens and that's the thing you ask me questions i don't really know the answer to because i'm going to 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 and says 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 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 make it possible for the supreme court to revisit this just in the way that they 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. in our elections but you know we did we were promised

a republican for we could keep it as their influence 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 what implicitly kennedy was saying and majority decision that we want to pounce upon and 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 for me was. i didn't 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 or 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 fly in an 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 flop investigative reporter with republic report dot org lee welcome back a comment to see you great to see you too what legislation was that the way for these drones. well you know there's this bill the f.a.a. authorization bill which is kind of like a catchall bill that funds the f.a.a. t.s.a. and some other similar already but you know hidden inside this bill were lots of new regulations and so the part that we're focusing on today is this rule that basically opens up domestic airspace to drones somebody 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 rounds that are created are made for the military you know the predator drone that is ubiquitous in the war on terror and afghanistan is made by general tom x. lockheed martin northrop grumman they make drones and there are a lot of other specialty industry proxy aviation is another one that makes military drones all of these companies came together and formed a trade association a couple years ago called the station under an aerial vehicles and they become a real force some capital and we did a story showing that they doubled their lobbying dollars in the last year two years ago they formed a congressional caucus with democrat. and republican congressman buck mckeon and

they're basically pushing the drone agenda on capitol hill but mccain of course the chairman of armed services and you know a and they've developed a very rigorous and massive really lobbying strategy to get the f.a.a. bill and related loss passed it to look just at their lobbying strategy and it's pretty dramatic i mean we came this point. oh ok going up you know if you go are you ten this power point yes this this power point basically shows that over the past year they've developed a pretty sophisticated plan to push through this massive expansion of domestic drones and we're going to have some estimate safe thirty thousand domestic drones flying over sized next week ok so here's the question what's what is what is not benign about this i mean we we had you know helicopters the o.j. simpson slow no 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 people with you know with vehicles and things you can see people's houses you can see things google is certainly making commercials use of of the ultimate drone these giant satellites up there they can see your street where we have. traffic helicopters and things we were already kind of used to having things in the sky photographing us what's the you know. the george orwell piece of this what what what's the scenario that concerns you well you know if you asked the lobbyists and the power point they said that their biggest challenge is overcoming civil liberties and it's true you know we've had a slow loss of civil liberties over that hump in civil liberties or overcoming the perception that they're violating civil liberties it wasn't clear in the power point they just listed a civil liberties one a top challenge and so you can take the battle of it as you will but you know there's a there's a creepy factor in this or drones whether it's for you know

a police department or you know some other private interest and hover above someone's house i mean how do you how do you mark your own private property in the air right if there is someone can just hover a drone above your house taking pictures of you maybe using an emperor and sensors to see how many people are in your house i mean that but. the limits to this haven't really been defined so this the 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 is a should not specifically these are. this language in it which by the way it's one industry brags that lawmakers took their proposal word for word and implemented it into the bill. that week there was no serious consideration there were no hearings there was no big public debate about this for magic change amazing leave things so

much for being with us and thanks for waking us up on this issue thank you tom speaking of 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 in go to epic's website at epic got org to sign the petition. so. you just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old but that's only true. i confess i am a little get

a tattoo i love proud because. he was kind of the jester. i'm very proud of all the belgians you explain. look look look look look look look look. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some of the part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture .

here take my take is your chance to send in your questions comments rants and observations about anything we talk about here in the big picture of during my radio show and my chance to give you my take on it one more time so it's comma

first comment came to us from steve by our viewer rant why. steve here in salinas california can both to see keystone pipeline it seems to me that for use the time and money that they want to spend on the keystone pipeline to use that time and money to develop renewable energy sources we would never use a pipeline and behold instead 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 time and money and put it rapid transit high speed rail kind of infrastructure that's actually going to help us rather than this insanity with you so my point our final comment of the day comes to us via the viewer rant line as well aaron had this to say about privatizing our prisons. are there my thing i'm a big fan of your show. and listening to focusing on i was thinking about the pot

for profit prison systems and i was wondering why does this guy disallowed considering that we actually have anti-slavery laws and i 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 service who by false arrests kept in prison and they made money off them by leasing them out as writing does course labor why is this why did this come to the system allowed under those laws and has anybody confessed it to be carting them. but to the best of my knowledge nobody has challenged it on the on the thirteenth amendment 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 police power and prisons are part of our police power by objection of the 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 a big picture listen up we want to know your to 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 but remember that your comments may be used on the ear. just. 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 a 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 all looking into greener and safer forms of energy during a time when france bulgaria and the rest of europe are facing serious economic challenges are 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 at a two thousand and eight press and people of faith in politics form santorum lee labeled the democratic party has. and said the democratic lawmakers on our most primal lost so he went on say the party is about sexual freedom us was it's about homosexuality it's about sexual freedom it's no secret the santorum is quite literally scared straight by homosexuality and has made numerous side were raising

statements about gays during the two thousand and twelve campaign just because a party stands up for something it believes in like equal rights for gays and lesbians doesn't mean that it's all about it or that it has a secret agenda to promote social freedom in america let's be honest there are plenty republicans who are all about sexual freedom just ask newt and the very very ugly david koch koch one half of the gruesome twosome known as the koch brothers was interviewed by the palm beach post of the week in need of yuko openly flaunted he and his brothers willingness and overall. ability to basically purchase public opinion and even elections when asked about his fiscal efforts to help wisconsin governor scott walker avoid recall. or help him as we should get pretty good at this over the years we spent a lot of money was causing we're going to spend more. actually agree with coke they have gotten pretty good point money into the political arena over the years of destroying the public 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 is very weary of. corporate america has us hooked 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's as though recessions 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 of 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 mouth 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 just blew up our economy and corporate america companies like apple or eight year 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. had 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 with deep 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 say we we say that we think that there's something genetic that predetermines people a 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 and divide work they lived in poverty which led to violence and crime which in turn led to many many social theorists suggesting the irish people were defective they were actually books written about the irish gene that made them more likely to commit violence then decades later when a wave of italian immigrants came to america or forced the start of the economic bottom in poverty same speculations sprang up maybe there is an italian gene a mafia gene too made them 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 its allianz or irish is absurd . there's something wrong with poverty not the people in poverty as richard wilkinson and kate pickett over the equality trust in the u.k.

uncovered nations that have higher wealth inequality and the significant portions of the 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 and 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 this whole spectrum of them from from drug abuse to to child abuse to it alice problems of mental illness crime on and on it goes so the answer to method use is jobs and more economic equality a strong middle class something corporate america seems to have a stake in the nine us from invested in corporations to pretty corporate shills in office to lobbying to kill stimulus legislation like rebuilding our infrastructure to offshoring manufacturing jobs and committing americans to the un winnable race

to the bottom of corporate america is playing an active role in killing off the middle class and thus is responsible in large part of the ongoing meth epidemic. there's nothing genetic about poverty in america as long as we have a long history of going into the idea that poverty is a moral failing it's not a history shows that when those same people have an opportunity to enter the middle class the epidemics vanish we need a national manufacturing policy but brand new trade policy we need to enforce the sherman antitrust act to break up the 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 its vice president george herbert walker bush

called it turned our country into a wasteland economically reaganomics needs to be reversed and now we need to kick corporate government corporate power out of our government and dump the last vestiges of reaganomics so that we can finally lay the soil in which to grow a new middle class instead of growing drug addicted epidemics. that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we've covered visit our websites of thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org dot com you can also check out our two you tube channel is there a link so tom hartman dark art harris show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and you can visit on arbonne dot com to download the audio podcast of our daily noon 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 at twitter at tom underscore arbonne on facebook at tom underscore her blogs message boards and telephone comment line and tom are in that column and

don't forget tomorrow thursday noon on the supreme court steps there's the flash mob at the coffee parties 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 i could tell your it we'll see it over.

wealthy british style. tirelessly. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on r t. more news today violence has once again flared up. and these are the images the

world has been seeing from the streets of canada after. challenger corp. the death of two foreign journalists in syria intensifies pressure for international involvement in the conflict but inside the country many face such calls are just fueling the violence. elect.