see. private prisons make money off course rationing the more people in iraq up and the longer you keep them the more money the right. are getting locked up may hurt your pocketbook but for those on the outside prisons maybe a recession proof investments are going to talk about that and show you how the private prison industry is locking up america throwing away the key. and the perp walk might pay for some but going to college sure doesn't seem to tuition is going up through the roof these days and that is not the only fee that skyrocketing interest rates are about to double so all of these expenses dumbing down this world superpower. really should choose to eat random. and i don't like

it should be held to almost zero standards whatsoever it's really should a brain fart well a hundred and forty characters a global revolution or a brain fart sense of conception six years ago where has taken over the way we talk from the arab spring to wiener gate we're going to show you how a lot can be said in a sentence or less. getting us wednesday march twenty first at seven pm here in washington d.c. and lucy catherine of and you're watching our t.v. . well here in the united states there may be some talk of small signs of economic improvement but with soaring dead a crippled housing market and the press and sooners it's still gloom and doom unfortunately when it comes to the big fiscal picture that most people are struggling to survive these days in these hard times but if you're looking to make

a quick buck and gambling isn't quite your thing there is a billion dollar business opportunity out there for you and this is an enormous industry that we're talking about it is virtually recession proof with sky high profits to boot states and average americans with some cash to spare can all get in on the action it's not so the snake oil folks it's the business of keeping people behind bars we're in for it not for our t.v. reports. america's financial crisis has been something of an on the shovel monster swallowing up millions of jobs homes and businesses around the nation yet amid this ongoing economic armageddon one industry has remained recession. and private prisons. with more than two point three million people behind bars the united states trumps china russia and the rest of the world in both the number and percentage of people doing time where it falls short it's being capable of

containing such a large population it's a political dilemma turns cash cow for dozens of corporations creaming profits off punishment private prisons make money. and more people they lock up the longer the and the more money so they have the same perverse incentive to expand our justice system and increase our number of people or our number of citizens who are behind bars because it increases their profit margin. the profitability of private jails because on the prison population in ewing to go up the rate of incarceration in the us has quadrupled since the days when america's war on drugs are short in the three strikes policy which ties judges to mandatory minimum sentencing even for nonviolent offenders since the late eighty's and into the ninety's and now today we see a turn away from that rehabilitated model so across the country prison programming is cut rehabilitation is being cut there's less opportunities for education to gain

work skills and instead there's just this drive towards isolation towards punishment private prison companies are paid between forty five and one hundred thirty dollars a day per detainee rates for juveniles women and immigrants could be higher while public prisons are accountable to the public private ones answer only to shareholders and are not subject to external scrutiny that means many private contractors face you consequences for them or even inhumane treatment of detainees and we just see more and more isolation sensory deprivation and prisoners who literally never interact with human beings guards would come. into the facility there would be a sign out front with their stock price to let them know how the company was doing corrections corporation of america and geo group the two largest private prison

companies with combined revenues of two point nine billion dollars last year but critics say they've been using that financial clout to line their own pockets even further encouraging politicians to keep going with the heavy handed sentencing program by launching an influential lobby campaign in the corridors of power by being and in order to influence public officials only a small power products industries effort to see policy change others include campaign donations so the companies make hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to politicians nationwide both on the federal and state levels with most states and the federal government currently operating under record deficits and budget cuts private prison companies are pitching their facilities as a lower cost alternative and while most americans continue struggling during this economic downturn now incarceration may grow even more profitable bring upper

nile r.t. new york. well the corrections corporation of america is the largest private prison firm in the country with over sixty facilities across the united states and thousands of prisoners within its walls this wall street giant is raking in the profits but why settle for rich when you can get richer like any smart business the c.c.a. is actively courting and investors said than this industry more profit is tied to well more people behind bars and the business insider recently unearthed the following creepy sales pitch from the c.c.a. it's billed as a quote unique investment opportunity for all and it highlights a number of selling points like the fact that private prisons are quote recession resistant private prisons make up just ten percent of the industry so the growth potential in this quote large and under penetrated market is huge and with a virtual monopoly on the industry the c.c.a. does not have to worry about competitors getting in its way now the other thing here is should the economy turn around not to worry good times actually mean higher

incarceration rates than for private prison companies that means more profits for all now i wasn't the only one that was a bit weirded out by the story here's the business and there's insiders joe weisenthal join me earlier today. well i guess the weird part to me is how it's presented by the company and presented by the company as being totally normal i mean it's very strange this company that that there exists a business where you can make a lot of money incarcerated people keeping people in cages and i'm squeamish i understand that we have prisons in society and that you know they have to be there and some people ought to be in prison and so i you know i'm not some idealist that would like to see prisons abolished or anything but it still seems strange to me so then when you see these presentations and these investment pitches they're basically you talk about the business like any other business i mean it's like you know coca-cola would advertise that even in

a downturn pace company might advertise that in the downturn people still have to buy toothpaste so it's a good very special person industry then here you have this company saying even in a downturn the private prison business never stops booming as if it's just this totally normal business and it obviously isn't and then i think beyond that part of that disturbs me is the incentives for the prison industry to lobby for more incarceration you know. the idea is that it becomes in their best interest to see longer sentences prison sentences handed out for more crimes and so if you know it's all pretty strange and unlike pretty much anything else you'll see in a publicly traded company right and then that's the whole sort of crux on it because you're tying profits to the outcome of incarceration rates and you know i mean i'm not one to pass judgment on what individuals do with their money but it seems to me that the bigger problem we get into here is when you apply this to states right because states are not only going to be financially vested in keeping

these private firms profitable in order to keep their rates low but states also control policy to some degree and i mean could there be a conflict of interest where for example more folks will end up going to present essentially in order to stay through these deals. it seems absolutely there's a potential for a conflict of interest we're just basically the interests of the company not being interest or in the same interests of society that may not want such a high degree of incarceration or may prefer a society in which we aim to rehabilitate prisoners faster and so on so there's all kinds of things and then you know there are questions about in this case. prison companies offering to buy existing prisons and you have to wonder whether the state is actually saving money in the long term or whether it's just they can do to project budget constraints they can't resist the one time lump sum of payment when they sell the prison so there are all kinds of strangers issues involved in this

business right and of course in a state issue in order to you know they'll have a mandate to keep the prison ninety percent full so it's not like you know a shoe company where you have to make enough shoes to keep the factory operating at ninety percent we're talking about criminals here so if the rates are better alone you know i don't really know what would have been looking. one thing it will also point out is it's not just prisons that end up having it sent to the prison guard union in california is famously powerful for having. for having supported a lot of the same things that the private prisons have in terms of increased cards to ration and increase you know penalties for criminals so basically any group benefits from more people in prison will do that will you know will try and use or get organized power and expand you know the prison society so it's not just private

prisons but obviously. they're the most glaring example of that these days and that was joe weisenthal the deputy editor for business insider. now college degree used to guarantee the chance for a better life sadly these days it seems to guarantee virtual debt slavery and recent recent college graduates face an unemployment rate that's nearly double that of the rest of the population tuition rates meanwhile are skyrocketing since one nine hundred seventy two the cost of a college degree went up by nearly three thousand four hundred percent you heard me right and student loan that has now surpassed the one trillion dollar mark but with fewer jobs available to college grads more and more students can't pay back their loans on time or at all and unlike most forms of credit you can't get rid of student debt in bankruptcy court and now there's this unless congress acts the interest rate on federally subsidized stafford loans is going to double this summer to six point eight percent and that can add as much as eleven thousand additional

dollars to a loan so how do mountains of student debt affect the new graduates and is the government investing enough in our intellectual infrastructure for those answers and more i want to bring in our friend joe hanson he is the founder and the director of education matters incorporated and is currently writing a book about student debt welcome to the program. thanks for having me go for we get to the solutions i want to see if you can sort of help our viewers understand the depth of the problem now is the issue of student debt crisis at this point. it absolutely has i'm not the only advocate who's been working on behalf of student gutters i've been doing this for nearly three years i'm actually currently in eureka california doing an investigative piece with the family here and i think one of the key things i'm glad that you mentioned the intellectual infrastructure too but also the emotional toll of this takes on individuals is is quite tremendous and to keep it in perspective there are currently thirty six million americans with

outstanding federal loans. that's a pretty sizable portion of the population and these are people who are lawyers and doctors and engineers and they you know they are a dynamic part of the middle class and yet as you mentioned these these younger individuals who've been hit hard very hard and are having to turn to private loans more and more so are graduating with mountains of debt and as you indicated we're now at at the one trillion mark if not you know pretty close i'm just surprised why don't we see as much discussion of this issue from our political leaders from you know even in the media i mean. this we have this new development right the federally subsidized loans are going to double that affects obviously people who are going into college we're not talking about the people who are already struggling with. yeah you're right because you know the truth

is we're in an election cycle right now and to credit the obama as obama administration you know he has it it fell the middlemen if you want if you will with with sallie mae and so forth but there isn't a lot of talk i think about the current borrowers those who are not in school or who are prospective students because they don't have they're not a fixed institutions anymore i hate to be cynical but the money is being funneled into the institutions and so they're sort of left hanging and there's also sort of this issue of well it sure own fault that's a lot of discussion that i that i see constantly on the internet nelse where which gets away from the point of you know what how do what do we think of higher education as a society because at one point you study of public good in something that we believe that we should invest in but to credit you know some poetry as an aside i mean. you're right this would be a public good well beyond where we had a massive sort of structural. hoping people going to school or what. i mean that's

a really great question it's a complex one i don't think that you can point to one thing but i might my sense is that it's sort of been the devaluation of the concept of higher education and the idea that it's somehow it's now it's not gauged terms of market value and i and i understand that you'd agree because you see all these articles i mean and i know that you have as many others have about what is the value of a degree and i and i get it and you know this this is part of the problem but i think that if you think about it on a larger scale culturally and socially is it really just about the so-called market value because a lot of people say oh will you you should have gone into the humanities. or thought. sorry i think we're having some psychic shift going to get. in and sharing or let's say some other sorry about that yeah you are cutting out

a little bit to see if we can bring you back there we go we are back with us people keep going so my point is that you know i'm not going to get into the arguments as to why we need humanity people need if there are a lot of good arguments for that but if you start pushing people into specific degrees like i was saying engineering if you on the other end but what about humanities forget about the humanities degree what about humanity in our approach towards education in general i mean i have a hard time believing that you know we can get bogged down in all these discussions about loans and interest rates and various firms of the government wanted to embrace this as as as a value as something that all people deserve to have access to that could help and it's just not because of political will it seems. yeah and this is just yet another example of how hard it things are we're going to listen to people on the hill who want to want to you know improve the problem it is to me you are absolutely right

it's what you don't seem to value education anymore and you can just look at the budget for twenty thirteen three percent of the budget it's going to higher education sixty eight billion dollars and you look at the defense industry and the pentagon and it's fifty eight percent of the budget and i think that those numbers alone you tell us a lot about what sort of value we have on higher education and we're losing out if you want to look at it economically really using out because china is definitely investing in higher education so is the middle east i mean they're going gangbusters meanwhile all the people here graduating are drowning in student loan debt and even worse are moving home with mom and dad well bombs over books it seems and unfortunately as the country as a whole that really suffer as i really want to thank you for taking the time to speak with us that was cringer hansen the founder and the executive director for all of us all education matters. now meanwhile

a little bird told me that it was some of his birthday today that's right the social networking site that made everything from wiener gates the arab spring possible this turning six years old twitter to say the least it has revolutionized the way that we communicate can't be expressed in one hundred forty characters and often than not it's not worth our time we didn't start out that way or if he is course our team correspondent on stasia turkana has more. six years ago. the little blue bird chirped its first tweet a new era of social networking took off plenty of youth weaved into one hundred forty characters really should just be a random and it should be held to almost zero standard whatsoever it's really sure just a brain fart with half a billion users today from anonymous bloggers to world leaders twitter has become a much more powerful force than that. the micro-blogging site helped the spread of

protests during the arab spring but it's also become a tool for manipulating public opinion a book has a higher standard of checking the new column just as a column is a higher standard than a blog tweet is the lowest circle of fact during iran's green revolution tweeted eyewitness accounts of government brutality helped boost western support for protestors turned out many of the bloggers were thousands of miles from the action . you thought he's also a power between recently occupy wall street somebody who we don't know who posts you know a message that's a cop should be killed ok my guess is the cops post it you know because then they were the ones that reacted to it made it a story whether for this information or propaganda you have a very misleading tweet from some of the members of the security council in the sense of it they're kind of using it for propaganda they're right today we said you know and it's it's it's very selective they don't want reporter to try to find out

what happened in a closed door meeting but they're tweeting things are often thoughts from inside them from closed doors to private affairs outed reckless twitter posts have seen its authors humiliated and virally hated even fired so whether it's somebody like a charlie sheen who can come out and say it's for terrible things about his bosses on twitter and his job or someone like as or klein is now back on him as a b c but in two thousand and seven. he was on with tim russert and treated. some time russert with an acid spiny test. and you know lost his contract with imus and the c.e.o. for arguably the most notorious downfall now former congressman anthony weiner's tweeting a photo of his most private of parts wiener certainly is one model of what not to do and i think that if i were ever going to cheat on my wife i don't think i would start by broadcasting it over twitter. but this new broadcasting tool available to

all is seductive i don't know if it makes them stupid or if they come to twitter already stupid and they simply use it stupidly i think probably the latter was closer to the truth the micro blog is a minefield for those not cautious and they could twitter drunken posts you know anything you wouldn't want your mom to see or wouldn't want be reported in a newspaper you probably shouldn't put on twitter so what are we putting on twitter and early study found so called pointless babble made up forty percent of tweets news only four percent is a waste of time for me. if you really care what sandra bullock aware we're following has to say it's not always time for you social networks or the difficult work time is wasted on what a young contributor and information. being when we can extend everybody else about nonsense the world. at the end of the day you can use it to dumb down you can use

it to smarten up that's how you use anything that really matters this expanded verse three of the first tweet marks billions of tweets already posted and revolutions guided lady gaga is the number one blogger with over twenty one million followers and micro blogs top trending topics of today include bieber our boyfriend and things i hate about sex some tweeters may well regret. is that the church party . well we decided to explore how twitter has changed us over the past six years both in terms of the media as well as just society as a whole so earlier i decided to speak to christopher chambers he's a journalism professor at the georgetown university and here's what he had to say. well you have to look at it from the from their perspective when we look at twitter's you look at it to know to attack the actual company twitter's yes the company twitter. thinking in one hundred forty characters now they're looking at

the world a world consciousness in terms of tweets per second were we as tweeters are looking at it in terms of one hundred forty characters but they're looking at this big mass consciousness and how to commodify it and how to monetize it make money off of it so they're not really thinking about the effect on society they're thinking about themselves effect on society however is that yes we start to get more and more tunnel vision the good news here is is that this is really isn't any different than what happened with the printing press or radio or t.v. it's just how we going to use it you heard the commentators there right it's how you use it and most of it is babble i mean when the gutenberg bible was a convert printing press was invented i mean yeah you had bibles being printed but then they started printing porn i mean it is and you have babel that's always going to make up a huge percentage of it and then the adult portion of twitter is like this much so

you know yes it's revolutionized the way we think because of speed and size but it's really just more of the same money of course there's always going to be you know the kids are trying to social media for getting deeper right and so on and tell price but same time i don't personally it's been the biggest tour in terms of journalism to thank for that i'm great lawyer you know most most people are getting a lot of people are professional journalists first of all but a lot of other people are getting their news from twitter or breaking it on twitter there you have a tool that is is really precise and can be there and you know depending on the circumstances you know it can be manipulated you heard that right but if you like anything i mean t.v. could be manipulated you know you had. the first appearances of photographs on the battlefield in the civil war that could be a manipulated but they were revolutionary that part is really turning our minds onto the possibilities and you can use something like storify to create whole

stories from tweet but beyond that yes justin bieber or you know my god tim thibeault just join the jets you know when you're talking about billions of these things occurring every thirty seconds you know yeah i mean the precise wonderful use of it it's always going to be eaten up by the juvenile crap. and in the non juvenile crap area do you see twitter as sort of another nail in the coffin of. the traditional media for have been able to just i think people have been able to it's just i think the gatekeepers have done a grill a good job of co-opting and recruiting people to be you know that you have you have a set of people who are curating and aggregating then you have a set of people who are repackaging that for twitter i think they're doing a pretty good job of that because if you think about it being the gatekeepers they're still people who are doing original reporting because even in a professional wonderful part of twitter a lot of those stories have to rejuvenate somewhere so if it's the new york times

or authority it doesn't matter i mean those outlets are going to control what's going on in the ground so that stuff can swallow it up and spit out among people's followers so they're always going to have their place and they've done a good job co-opting i don't think that that's spelled the death knell of too many publications the way the internet initially came in and flatten them but they're starting to reach just to that as well although there are some incentives held out my car first well yeah but i love that i wish i could read it on the air but you know the one area where i guess there's been a stark sort of example of twitter's usefulness was talking about wall street movement earlier it had been a free press a sort of late for that and a lot of the ways that we were getting information and personally putting information out there was twitter and i think. does the same person at the arab spring and all alone on the ground there and that and that is something that that phenomenon again is nothing new i mean we could go back like i said one hundred fifty years to the telegraph and battlefield photographers in the civil war

revolutionizing this but again with the speed and the ability to get a lot of of resources online quickly i mean it's been indispensable to me you know i was watching the tweets you were filing you know while people were getting their heads bashed in in oakland i mean you can't you cannot compete with that even even t.v. cannot compete with that especially with budgets being cut with american media outlets however again it all goes back to that gets overshadowed by the nonsense and even and there are there are some some positive things that have like a lead lining instead of a silver lining for example at south by southwest in austin there was a lot of talk about how the digital divide in the united states between minorities and whites was being frittered away by twitter but when you look at some of the tweets and access it's just again it's you people are tweeting about rianna or not tweeting about you know the n. double a c.p. so again you see a lead lining to the silver cloud in other words so certainly i'm very excited

there are literally a couple at florida next i'm going to save us all and a hundred for you. chris chambers journalism professor at georgetown university. well it hasn't been a good couple of weeks in afghanistan to say the least first came the photos of the marines urinating on afghan corpses then u.s. troops burned the koran at a giant wartime prison prompting nationwide riots the gruesome killing spree by a u.s. soldier allegedly last week resulted in the deaths of sixteen afghan civilians the taliban has suspended peace talks and with the u.s. and with the united states and afghan president hamid karzai has proclaimed himself quote at the end of his rope with washington and now this is shocking new video out of a dentist and showing what appears to be an apache gunship crashed near a school and the incident highlights the dangers of aggressive a low level flying in a part of the country where american troops are almost entirely dependent on airpower no one was killed according to the video scription of the copter crew

supposedly could face criminal charges now again this incident incident comes at a political various moments in america's decade long war in afghanistan and the next hour we're going to hear from them to get investigative reporter who's been on the ground to understand exactly why unfortunately that does it for now for more on a story that we've covered you can always check out our you tube channel that's you tube dot com slash r.t. america our web site at r.t. dot com slash usa and there you're going to find several stories that we haven't had a chance to discuss on the air just yet today our web team posted a new piece about the internal revenue service getting its very own swat team that's right the i.r.s. is pulling out its big guns to crack down on companies that keep their keep moving their earnings from country to country in order to lower the amount of taxes they owe to the u.s. tax evasion anyone but this task force will spare no expense to the technique known as transfer pricing and i'm sure our way of team.