book of the alone a show look at the real headlines with none of the mercy or can we live in washington d.c. now it's an hour we're going to speak to limp air more about the crisis of job insecurity in america we often hear about the unemployed but what about those people that are just barely hanging on the effects of that stress could kill you then thanks to a freedom of information act request what many detainees have been saying for years has now been confirmed by guantanamo in iraq and afghanistan some detainees were forcibly drug often right before or during interrogations truthout strace leopold is going to give us all the details on that and since it's thursday artie's andrew blake will talk tech to me so we've got all that morphy tonight including

a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media decided to miss. so today the news was kind of all over the place the florida state's attorney released new evidence of the case against george zimmerman the effort to repeal the health care law moves forward the house passing that repeal by nearly sixty votes republicans want to eliminate the president's health care law but they're short on details about what would take its place joe biden to give his keynote address to the. convention in houston mitt romney as you know spoke to the group yesterday getting both boos and a standing ovation senate democrats want to move quickly on the president's plan to raise taxes on america's high wage earners tonight it's general dick cheney's place the former vice president is hosting a fundraiser at his wyoming home for mitt romney weekly unemployment claims down to

three hundred fifty thousand that's the lowest level in more than four years since president joined by the room during his sunday sermon and houston texas there is some evidence that suggest paternal had a hand in covering up the sandusky affairs influenced others at the school not to report an incident. alleged abuse. so sure there's a lot going on especially politically if you live in the washington d.c. bubble of the he said she said this ad that ad obsession and most of the time we do see this boil down to personal attacks obama's campaign going after mitt romney for lying about bain the romney campaign attacking the president on the poor state of the economy and so on and so forth and sometimes it just feels like this and list cycle where you think that maybe you're the twilight zone because the same things just keep repeating themselves and yet you never get anywhere with any of it there's never any conclusion the twenty four hour media cycle just keeps going and

go in and going and answers are never found partly because no substantive questions are ever asked but that's all part of the strategy right to distract you with sound bites good looking talking heads so that you don't even realize the substance is entirely missing from what's playing on your t.v. screen we're here on this show we actually like to pay attention to details broad trends follow up on stories so these can put pieces together and actually learn something from it and so very often we end up covering a story or providing some kind of analysis that just seems to make so much sense and yet nobody else pays attention to it and then suddenly one day a full report comes out the proves that we what we've been saying all along the things that we have already highlighted because so often information really is there you just have to look for it and so in light of all of that what i'd like to do today is point you report released this week by the congressional budget office this report shows a five year spending plan outlined by the pentagon earlier this year it's going to

be one hundred twenty three billion dollars over budget that's over budget in the sense that would violate budgetary limits that are been set by congress and a lot of this would be cost of operations and support now all that i for say is told just so we talk about wasteful pentagon spending all the time on this show. or seemingly unexplainable pentagon spending and it was just earlier this week that we highlighted over thirteen billion dollars in new contracts that have been awarded in just a two week time span and we were just so curious right how is it possible and the pentagon is just blowing through thirteen billion dollars in two weeks when all we do lately is here and complain about budget cuts well that's because they don't really believe that budget cuts apply to them not entirely don't apply because the c.v.r. report shows us they think that they can bend the rules and you want to know the really crazy part here is that this c.v.r. report it doesn't even take into account the extra five hundred billion dollars in

cuts that are supposed to take effect in january that's a little thing that we like to call sequestration so if they're already one hundred twenty three billion dollars over that haven't even factored in an extra five hundred billion over the next ten years i think it's pretty obvious that the d.o.d. will not be complying with spending cuts and they can do that because they know the republicans are going to make sure that they don't actually take effect and we spoke about this just the other day when a statement from a pentagon's press spokesman gave us some insight. really just handing out parting gifts well tweet from the a.p. is josh letterman today gave us some insight when he quoted the pentagon spokesman as saying we don't have any plan right now for sequestration to have that certainly appears to be the case where the pentagon has been spending money makes me wonder if they're insuring that the private counterparts will survive the cuts if they're just ignoring the january deadline. yep but nobody else picks up on it because that

means you actually have to pay attention so today i'd like to say told you so to the mainstream media but the thing is that we find ourselves in this position so often here on the show so i think that we're going to create an entire segment for it and it will be called. so told she told you so told you so. so you guys going forward that on future shows but tonight it's just one more thing that the mainstream media chooses to miss. we often talk about the difference between the official unemployment numbers that are put out there and the use six you six measures not only those who are out of work but also those who are marginally attached part time workers so all of fishel unemployment is currently eight point two percent the u. six is fourteen point nine that's millions more people out there who don't have

a steady full time job there are millions more who are living in chronic fear that they could be let go of their job at any time it's called job insecurity and it's the plague that's perhaps even more hit more detrimental than unemployment might be leading to a rise in anxiety disorders and other effects on our health so why don't we spend more time talking about it joining me to discuss this from our studio in new york is lynn param or contributing editor at alter net and lynn thanks for joining us tonight and you know you started writing an entire series on this issue of job insecurity and so why is it that you chose to write about people that that have jobs rather than those who don't. well that's a good question i really have come to feel that job insecurity is the disease of the twenty first century i think it's one of the defining problems of our time we hear a lot about unemployment and how bad it is for people that don't have jobs or as you mention who only have part time jobs but job insecurity people refer to it in

different ways a feeling of precariousness a feeling that the shoes going to drop any day whatever it is it's causing tremendous anxiety across the country and i think it's building up into a real public health crisis human beings are sort of wired to deal with short term stress or emergency situations but the chronic fear that can come from losing the potential of losing a job can actually be worse for your health then losing it it can cause short term problems and long term problems including coronary disease stroke even cancer and studies show that it can actually shave years off your life so this is something that we really need to pay attention to or a i mean it's kind of scary too in the sense you talk about this in terms of the rise of anxiety disorders in the us the fact that we have so many people that are being prescribed xanax or prozac or something like that i mean it almost feels like

we're living in in a science fiction novel you know we're getting to the point where brave new world is becoming a reality. absolutely i was just talking to a friend today and recently she was in a very stressful job in which the fear of layoff was a constant pressure and she went to her doctor and described sentence she was having she was unable to sleep she was losing weight she was sort of fueling up on on coffee and not able to eat properly and he prescribed xanax to her for the reason that you know if she wanted to hold onto her job he thought she needed to calm down so it's really a drug like xanax that treats anxiety is really the drug of the twenty first century in some ways there are studies that show that eighteen percent of americans now say that they suffer from anxiety and just to put that in perspective it's

twice the number that suffer from mood disorders like depression or bipolar disorder and it's pretty evident that job insecurity is part of this forty five percent of workers say that job insecurity is a major cause of stress and a recent study shows that college graduates are more concerned with job insecurity than any other factor having to do with employment when they're seeking work they're looking at job insecurity above and beyond pay above and beyond benefits they're very very concerned that if they get a job they're not going to be able to keep it and the thing is you know it didn't used to be that way right you have people that worked at a company for maybe thirty years for their entire life and so obviously we're still reeling from the effects of the financial crash but you know what other factors do you think really play into this have really created this freelance nation that some people say we're turning into. yeah well for some people those lower down on the

economic ladder they've been feeling this job insecurity since probably the late seventy's and eighty's but nowadays it really cuts across all demographics the reason i call it the disease of the twenty first century is that you know we started out this century not with a bang but with the bust we had the dot com bubble burst and then we haven't even really recovered unemployment never went back down to the level it was before the dot com crash and then of course we got the financial crash of two thousand and seven so job insecurity has really been with us this you know the whole the whole run so far in this twenty first century and it's it's even hitting people in europe where there was supposed to be a land of happy job security where everyone had full time employment no longer the case even in places like germany there is a preponderance of what people are calling many jobs which are low paying jobs with few benefits and the possibility you know of having your job and so it's

really a global problem and right now. as you said it's affecting millions of americans but it's not being talked about and if you're in the situation you're not really part of the t.v. typical t.v. narrative. it's not a discrete social event where you can call on friends and family or expect something like an unemployment check to help you you're really stuck in limbo or the twilight zone as you were put out earlier i guess and i'm more of a i guess it's more of an invisible problem right because to the outside person you get up and you go to work every day and you come home from work and it looks like things are normal but you know you bring up the point this is a global problem even in european countries where there's definitely more of a social safety net you know you see people start worrying about this job insecurity and so in that sense i mean we live in this era of globalization we just have to get used to it that's just the way that it's going to be corporations are always going to you know think about their bottom line expect more productivity

from their workers and yet give them less security. yeah well that's a good point we've really been fed a lie on this whole issue we've been told by neo classical economists that employers need maximum flexibility to hire and fire so that wealth can be created for all well obviously that's not working out wages are stagnant so that that is a lie that we've been told so we need to wake up to that lie it's probably going to take a mass movement to change things but you know there's a lot of contributing factors we need we need unions stronger unions we need fiscal policy that puts americans back on the job we need monetary policy that doesn't focus on inflation at the exclusion of job creation and inflation is often a code word for keeping wages down and you know keeping people feeling insecure so there's a lot of friends we have to hit this on but we need to get serious about this because high unemployment of course is a predominant factor in this ongoing feeling of job insecurity and the effects of

this are going to take time to incubate but again we're looking at a major public health crisis and we're all going to be bearing the cost of that if we don't somehow turn this around arlin well thanks for joining us and we'll keep an eye to on your series as you continue to look at this issue. thank you. our guys it's time for our first break of the evening but when we come back we'll tell you about companies who exploit consumers in the wake of natural disasters and then jason leopold is going to be on to discuss the drugging of detained terror suspects is the subject of his latest investigation after this.

morning news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. joint operation to rule the day. wealthy british style. that's right with. the. markets why not. come to. 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 into kaiser report.

there hasn't been anything yet on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before source material is what helps keep journalism honest we. we want to present. something else. two weeks ago a violent wind storm called a direct show swept through the washington d.c. area and it caused death destruction and lengthy power outages for three million residents and the whole ordeal has left d.c.

area residents a bit unsettled to say the least. well guess what we have yet another reason for you to be pissed at petco you see. a whole month in a little weird over here what's happening with the life guys when i'm with the wife hello anybody where the power goes. i'm sorry but we just can't do the show like this guys oh ok that's better and i was right you see it turns out. what do you want to see the lights went out there for quite some time so you weren't actually working during that time so we're going to have to dock your pay

what is ridiculous are you kidding me right now if you can i came to school you can see the amount right here this is absurd this is absurd how can you do is charge me right it's not my fault that the power went down so i look like a maryland resident to you. the state order that allows the power companies to charge you when they can't charge you for delivering that power until this year it had been unlimited but in january in order reduced billings to only covering utilities first twenty four hours of losses. yes that is actually real pepco is charging its customers a fee for the first twenty four hours that they were able to charge you for power because they were giving you any does that make sense to anybody else out there and that goal isn't the only utility company taking advantage of this maryland rule baltimore gas and electric or b g e they've also been charging customers for the first twenty four hours of the director of blackout how can you charge people for

a service that you're supposed to provide that you were providing at the time why should you get paid and your pa's customers get punished when you failed to do your job the thing is don't blame pepco when usa first reach out to them a spokesperson had this to say they said it's the law it's called bill stabilization it's the law well that sounds like a really crappy law that just screws people over and guess the law is in d.c. and virginia the power companies are prohibited from collecting these so called bill adjustments now for maryland customers sure the charge might be small but it adds up as one b.g. customer said it's less than a dollar for me but if there were six hundred thousand people that were out that's an additional six hundred thousand dollars that they have for not delivering power so whether they're allowed to or not utility companies in maryland just shouldn't profit off of consumers hit by natural disaster if you ask me and the problem is

that they're not alone a lot of companies out there trying to cash in after catastrophes companies like charter communications when a tornado destroyed one man's home in alabama he called charter to cancel his cable service the response to govern the company return or cable box or you owe as two hundred bucks to buy that box if they wanted was destroyed in the tornado. it were worth the blue for sure shortly after the tornado charter its policy in response to the large scale catastrophic nature of that tornado she says that now a charter will not charge customers for any missing destroyed or damaged equipment . now lease charter change their policy but it's not like that was the first tornado to ever hit birmingham i don't believe that it's never tried that before because we see companies try to pull this stuff all the time like t. mobile to a regular guest friend of this show mike riggs he recently had a run in with them when its mother's house burnt down in last year's texas

wildfires she had to move thirty miles away to red rocks where her t. mobile cell phone didn't get service so my call they cancel her service and guess what t. mobile also wanted to slap him with a two hundred dollars fee this time it was an early termination fee now that was something that credo mobile her husband's cell phone company didn't do so at least every company out there doesn't try to profit off of acts of nature but in the end after the website consumers posted my story t. mobile also changed their tune and decided to waive the fee but i guess seeing a trend here companies are trying to make a profit no matter what when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar they sure are mighty apologetic but don't want them for you just like the initial charges they're apologies are about one thing and that's their bottom line and rain or shine they only care about making money. well for years current and former detainees from guantanamo and other u.s. military sites as well as their attorneys have argued that they were forcibly given pills and injected with unknown medications often they allege that this happened

during or immediately prior to interrogation sessions and now thanks to a freedom of information act request filed by truthout a report from the d.o.d.'s deputy inspector general has confirmed much of it while this report couldn't prove this was a government wide policy or that detainees were given mind altering drugs for the purposes of facilitating interrogation it did show that some detainees were subjected to chemical restraints convinced that they were giving a truth serum or given powerful anti-psychotic medications that can impair a person's ability to provide accurate information so not only sheds light on other dark aspect of post nine eleven practices but raises some very serious ethical concerns for military doctors joining me from our studio in los angeles is jason leopold lead investigative reporter for truthout dot org jason thanks for joining us and i guess just start by telling us you know what were some of the things that you found to be the most the most damning in this inspector general's report. well

as you just pointed out detainees were interrogated while they were under the influence of powerful anti-psychotic medication particularly one that was named in the report how the all the medication is known to produce unreliable information or it says rather it could lead to unreliable information the fact that there are chemical restraints excuse me the fact that detainees were hydrated with i.v. fluids rather with i.v.'s and they kept them hydrated while they were interrogating them so it's it's truly troubling disturbing i think it just adds another it's another piece of evidence in the large file of war crimes that apparently you know took place over one ton of money but the report also notes

that this is not just pantano afghanistan and iraq as well but just if i can point out that the detainees were under the influence of these powerful anti-psychotics they produce unreliable information now under the system that set up with the d.c. circuit when they challenge their detention in the d.c. circuit presumes that everything that the detainees say is true so the burden falls upon the detainees to prove that what they had said is not true and i think that the lawyers who represent some of these detainees will be challenging that well yeah i guess that now that this report has actually come out that might make a difference right but so this as far as i understand the inspector general decided to start this investigation take a look at the matter in two thousand and eight then they compile this report and two thousand and nine so then they just decided to to hide it not to release it to the public that's why you have ended up having to you know to file this point request. exactly the report was classified and we followed freedom of

information act requests actually my colleague jeffrey kaye who is the lead reporter on the story he filed the freedom of information act requests i filed what's known as a mandatory declassification review we wanted to get the you know the ball rolling in the hopes of getting it out there sooner but it's it's very interesting in terms of the timing when it was released the report makes notes that jose padilla who is the u.s. citizen was declared an enemy combatant held at the u.s. naval brig in south carolina that he was the subject of a deliberate ruse in which he was told by his interrogators that a routine flu shot with truth was truth serum so what happened there is that you know jose pedia sued donald rumsfeld other bush administration officials for his treatment and torture the supreme court recently rejected that his attorney did not have this report did not have this evidence when they took this case to the supreme

court or even to the court the various the lower courts court of appeals which rejected it had they had this report it certainly would have been interesting to see how they reacted how those courts reacted to the evidence but the release of the report you see it becomes right after the supreme court rejected it i mean this definitely definitely seems an ethical and many respects if you are forcibly drugging people be they detainees i mean you still if you're a military doctor you're still a doctor right i'm assuming they probably didn't know the patients history when they were doing these things and then from you know what i understand too there was an ethics committee that actually approved all this and said that that it was ok which just seems absolutely crazy to me you know and so in that sense since it wasn't a government wide policy which is what this report told us and we just think that it's a couple bad seeds you know specific detainees that they were that they were targeting or do you think that there is more that they missed in this in this investigation.

oh they miss quite a bit along that they do and we point that out in the report and let me make clear that they say they could not substantiate that this was a government wide policy in the reason they could not substantiate that was simply the when they tried to speak to some detainees. one lawyer for example said his memory is shot he can't i don't think he can give you any other information they did not attempt to speak to any detainees who have been repatriated. they spoke to two detainees who had made these claims so they also reviewed interrogation plans and they noted that in those interrogation plans there was no. indication that mind altering drugs were used for the purposes of interrogation however that you know i think that as we pointed out that there's another set of medical records

that they certainly could have looked at they did not indicate that they looked at those medical records and there may be some clues there so i don't think that this is simply. this did not happen it's that there were investigative gaps and they were not covered has the pentagon responded at all now that you know now this information has been released. yes they have in fact it's very interesting at the bottom of this very lengthy story we note that in this report there's a letter from the department of defense to the inspector general a couple of years ago that said this report will generate media attention please let us know if it's released or when it's released so we can prepare talking points those talking points are now out as some in the mainstream media have reported that there's no evidence that mind altering drugs were used. to question detainees that's a nice way to spin it but that's not exactly the case as i pointed out with jose

padilla. and excuse me with. one of the other detainees who was injected with how it all so their response is no detainees were you know were injected with mind altering drugs or given mind altering drugs during interrogations but again that's that's that's a way to spin it it's not exactly true while there's always a way if the pentagon does anything well it's definitely spin jason thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you. guys a time for the short break but when we come back our keys and your blade we'll talk tech to me and our regular update of related news to find out what sophia champion lamar smith is that you now why fi has to do with cockroaches this. wealthy british.