we've told you for your media. c.e.o. don carty dot com. it's a story you are likely to see on mainstream news but one that speaks volumes about the death penalty debate here in the u.s. a mentally disabled man executed last night in texas so why are some states willing to overlook science to use the death penalty or question more. plus of trading away your rights for a shot at an international partnership and the best part is we have no clue what exactly is happening even congress is being left in the dark we'll look into the secrecy surrounding the trans-pacific partnership talks straight ahead. plus it's no secret that congress needs to make some serious cuts to spending but their arsenal of rhetoric is no match to the firepower of the pentagon coming up i'll ask a retired colonel if there's a safe way to slash the bloated military budget without putting national security

on the line. again the show with a look at the state of texas there last night a mentally disabled man was executed marvin wilson was convicted of killing a police informant twenty years ago he had an i.q. of sixty one well below the average of seventy the number considered to be the bare minimum to determine competency after months of appeals that reached all the way to the u.s. supreme court wilson lost his battle taxes of course is no stranger to the death penalty have currently is at the top when it comes to executing prisoners on death row perhaps you know it's no surprise then when governor texas governor and former presidential candidate rick perry spoke about it he got this reaction in the state of texas has a. very high. a very clear.

process in place you will face the ultimate justice in the state of texas and that is you will be executed what you make your blood. so a large applause there for texas governor rick perry marvin wilson was the two hundred forty fifth inmate executed under the governor and the entire story was largely ignored by the media and upon a journalist ron a colleague has been following this story closely though and joins us from fairfax virginia hi there rhonda i know in two thousand and two the u.s. supreme court ruled in i can see virginia that the mentally disabled could not be executed what was different this time. that actually would have a lot of the legal scholars shocked in fact that yesterday the supreme court wouldn't grant a stay of execution for martin wealth and even though he had been diagnosed by a court appointed. neuropsychology as being mentally retarded and had an i.q.

of sixty one which is very much below the competency threshold of seventy so you know it's kind of shocking because in two thousand you like you said the supreme court ruled that it was unconstitutional so it came as a shock to his lawyers and it really came as a shock to a lot of people they were expecting the supreme court to side with the ruling i know right now you wrote a piece for salon in which you talked about a set of standards it seems to me some very nonscientific ones inspired by lenny in the book of mice and men to determine this characterization so i mean i'm wondering are you saying a fictional character invented by john stein back was actually used as an example of precedent. yes exactly what happened. after the in two thousand and two when it's being done constitutional right to execute people with mental disabilities they have basically left it up to the state to determine how they were going to apply that standard. so most of the deputies they have got

use of some sort of thing that basically adopted clinical standards the same kind of going to use and i can determine if someone is mentally disabled that was on the other hand in it up anything so when a case came forward to the texas court of criminal appeals and two thousand and four the court of criminal appeal went ahead and invented temporary standards and they used for ration which you can see in their opinion this character lenny small from john steinbeck of mice and men which is a fictional character who has severely mentally handicapped. so they use this as one of the benchmarks so that they base the seven standards around the character the standards are completely not clinical completely unscientific have not been used by any scientist clinician whatsoever in diagnosing mental disability and running do you reached out to the john steinbeck's family in writing your article

what did they what was their response to all this well they actually what they did was they released son thomas i might release a statement basically saying that family was disgusted that they had had it known until this particular case that the texas court of criminal appeals was using this character from his father's book as an example so but i tried to actually contact them again i contact them but they actually just said we're going to let our statement stand. and it's a pretty powerful statement and i would have missed the quotes from the article but yeah i mean this is something that obviously john steinbeck can't say or comment on this because he's passed away but his family clearly believes that he would be disgusted by this i think most people would be near using a fictional character rather than science to determine who is competent enough to be put to death i think that certainly is a bigger picture problem with the system than just. this case alone i know though

in this case law enforcement said wilson was trying to manipulate the system by faking his disability what's your take on that. well my take on that is that a court appointed psychologist board certified doctor is actually sat down with this man and spent time clinically evaluating him and determine from there based on a multitude of nationally recognized certified. and a lot of time spent with them that was needed he was mentally retarded so aside from that i'm not really sure what else a court needs. the really shocking thing about texas is that they're basically they've invented the standard and the supreme court basically said it was ok to use the standard to deny this man a stay and it's just it's really shocking i mean you know people sitting on a court turning to a fictional character you know for many medical diagnosis is really insane in and

of itself let me ask you this i mean regardless of his i.q. wilson was convicted of killing a police informant twenty years ago i guess ranya what do you think that the government of texas should have done with. well judging by the fact that he clearly is mentally disabled. they shouldn't have executed him that is for sure. and they should make sure in games like that i mean they should make sure that these people have good representation good legal counsel which oftentimes of the case i mean that's one of the reasons that the court room court ruled you couldn't execute people with mental disabilities because they were going rable to wrongful conviction and they were vulnerable to having you know across the representation and not being able to you know not being able to help themselves. so i think that the state of texas need to do adopt a regular standards i mean i actually would object to the executing people period but it won't be heard ality i don't think any time soon they should be using

science to determine they should be using doctors and science to determine whether people are mentally ill mentally disabled or whatever else medically needs to be diagnosed and right now i know you're following this really for quite a while now but i want to talk to you about the lack of coverage overall on this case i know we talk to various web sites and you know we discovered it took several clicks of searching to find out anything written about this case i know you know nothing really on the front page of c.n.n. or fox or on this n.b.c. before or after this happened you often had to click on you know three or four or five different pages before you even got to the story why do you think that is. i mean i think there's a lot of reasons for that one of it is that people are just not the best addicts to quote unquote criminals somebody who's been convicted of taking someone else's life people immediately just don't care i'm also there's a huge stigma that surrounds mental mental disability and mental illness i mean

there was a man of texas just a week prior who was almost executed but look we had i think you should state you had would severely is running almost a death in texas as well and he didn't receive much attention either and i think a lot of that has to do with that people are just not they don't understand mental illness they don't understand mental retardation either those are obviously both two different things but. on top of that merican i don't think the death penalty is that big of a deal they don't realize the injustices that are inherent in the criminal justice system that lead to wrongful convictions and they don't they don't understand that the death penalty isn't a good veteran doesn't work as a deterrent to. jim murder irving's i can get you to doesn't always so and i think the media at this point texas has executed so many people i mean two hundred forty five under one governor is eighteen i think that it's become normalized it's like it's not a story anymore certainly that's somewhat apparent at least when rick perry spoke

back at the early presidential republican presidential debate and that just you know roaring applause that he got for mentioning it it is really interesting especially when you compare the attitude about the death penalty here in the u.s. to to other developed european countries it's very different thank you for following the story always great to have you on the show independent journalist to run your colic let's talk now about a controversial international agreement which hasn't been picking up too much attention by the mainstream media i'm referring to the transpacific partnership known as t p p well the obama administration to boast about the trade benefits that come with a closer partnership with nations of the pacific rim others are not as you. or to jump on the t t t p p bandwagon including american activists and even some members of congress who are concerned over the secrecy surrounding the negotiations deputy u.s. trade representative ambassador demetrius moore on to spoke at the woodrow wilson

center today and had this to say when asked about the secrecy behind the negotiations. one of the you know the issues that comes up is why or why don't you release the negotiating text there's a reason for that. when you're negotiating an agreement if you're going to end up negotiating an agreement in public it limits the ability of negotiators to be to have the flexibility to achieve the positions that are in the best interests of their country. and so that's why we're trying to strike a balance between ensuring the integrity of the negotiations that we're not negotiating the t.p. in the press versus making sure that our stakeholders whoever they are whether they're from the business community whether they're from n.g.o.s whether they're from labor unions whether they're academics have as much access to to the negotiators as possible while that response was given after melinda st louis international campaign director for public citizens global trade asked the question

about secrecy and melinda joins me now here in the studio let me start just by asking your thoughts on his response well i think it's a misleading response in many ways well one of the things that he said initially was i'm proud of the level of transparency that we've had in these negotiations and yet there is much precedent for a much broader amount of transparency in the negotiations in two thousand and three at this point in negotiations of the free trade area of the americas the entire draft text was released to the public the world trade organization opens up the draft text to the public so it's not it's not an outrageous request that members of congress and the public and press are asking for yes certainly is an interesting response to say that you feel that those involved in the negotiations don't want anything to come out. and i know as you said. ambassador miranda said this is been the most transparent trade negotiation that has ever been negotiated what could you

be referring to well it's hard for us to understand because what we see is the. have you you might call it a two way mirror where they willing gauge with stakeholders they'll let us talk to them and tell us and tell them their opinions but then we don't actually get to see what they do if they take those opinions into account or how they're going to to address it we can't actually give a meaningful input if we don't know what's actually being negotiated and that is the same position that senator wyden the ranking member of the chair of the subcommittee in the senate deals with trade has said to us t.r. and said this is been common practice throughout the years for members of congress to have access and you're not giving giving me access to this text and so this is not and just position in any way and it's been disappointing to see us t.r. dig in that position certainly the transparency or lack thereof surrounding this one of the major issues but i know

a lot of people tout the benefits of this and some of the benefits i know listed today at the conference a better relations with pacific rim countries is setting global standards benefiting working americans do you think these are fair assessments well i don't think that they're fair because i think there are many ways that you can create global partnerships and one way is one way that we don't think is the correct approach is to allow six hundred corporate advisers to write to have access to the text to write it and to not let the rest of the population who in all of the t.p. countries who will be effected by this agreement have any say and into what is actually happening and let me stop you there for a minute just because we're talking about those people involved the country's i want to put up a map showing the countries involved in the transfers pacific partnership and then there are also countries who are thinking about joining later in the process so i guess just let me ask you why you think so many countries are willing to take part

well at this point is it's. eleven countries that have been nine countries mexico and canada have just joined to go they are not even at the negotiating table for another ninety days and other countries are are looking into it the united states is seeing this is in a lot of ways of the last trade agreement they were negotiate they want this high standard agreement as they're calling it and that anyone who wants to trade with the united states would need to join and so basically what we're looking at is something that will could cover up to half of the world's population and we need to know what is what the rules are in that agreement and what is actually being negotiated in our name from what you have been able to discover what are you most concerned about well there there is actually a host of concerns that have to do with the everyday life of people in this country and in other t.p. countries there there are concerns that there was a leaked text on investment that would allow corporate empower corporations to attack there are public interest regulation like environmental laws public health

laws to take them to four interview nals and bypass our own domestic courts there are concerns about increasing the price of medicines they want to extend patents for large pharmaceutical companies so generic companies can't compete they want to limit internet freedom which was actually defeated in congress but it's a backdoor way to try to get that there are concerns about banning by american preferences and by locals so that if we're trying to increase american manufacturing. and in fact we wouldn't be able to use our tax dollars to do that and so there are a lot of incentives to actually offshore jobs and that's partially why it's misleading to say that this is about trying to create jobs let me just ask you about one of those things you mentioned the internet freedoms we talk a lot about net neutrality here at r t and as you said yourself i mean this was something that was not given the green light by congress and yet it would just be inserted into this bill i mean wouldn't congress then have to vote on it eventually well the thing about these trade agreements is the way that they're negotiated

there they're negotiated by the. executive branch and then what they want to do is bring it back for an up and down up or down vote to congress so it's a huge thousands of pages twenty eight chapters very little of it to do with trade with for an up and down vote and that's why congress says we need to have influence at this stage because it's too late after you have finished and signed on the dotted line and we should actually have and it's actually congress's authority to decide who watch countries we negotiate agreements with and what the parameters of those agreements are and what we're seeing is the executive really going going off on its own and it's going to be of to their peril if they don't involve congress early on that who are actually representing the people in the united states and i know you mentioned ron wyden but are there other senators and congressmen beaking out about this trying to get involved now there is actually a growing chorus and just last month one hundred thirty three house democrats

including all of my almost all of the ranking members of of the relevant committees signed a letter to president obama and us to the

plan to be made. with one hundred ten billion being made the first year and that money is split evenly from defense and domestic programs now the defense cuts have brought about a whole lot of people coming out to warn about the impending doom and gloom that could be brought about by talk about compromising the security of our country and the lives of our military but it turns out the exorbitant amount of military money is spent on a whole lot of other things not really being talked about so we want to tell you all about them here's something you might be shocked to learn the firm formerly known as blackwater now academy l.l.c. will be paying a seven point five million dollar fine up on top of its already forty two million dollars settlement reached regarding civil arms export violations they recently admitted to wrongdoing in connection to seventeen federal criminal charges so

a cut to the company's profits then actually know the funds well used to pay off those fines will come from already existing contracts but the pentagon so it seems to be an act of accountability boils down to continued revolving door between defense contractors and the government all as we continue to hear how terrible it is to cut any money from the pentagon i do want to talk more about this with retired u.s. army corps colonel douglas macgregor executive vice president of the burke mcgregor group and colonel macgregor let's begin with this information that's come out about blackwater or academy or whatever its name is these days this is a company notorious for playing by its own rules and yet never seeming to be held accountable so i guess i'm wondering what role you think this current situation this incident has in the current discussion that we've been having about sequester ation well in the context of seacrest ration it's meaningless this contractor does what it does because the federal government wants it to that's what people need to

keep in mind we hire people like akademi to do the things that the federal government either cannot do or would rather not do so when we talk about wrongdoing i suspect. if you follow the trail you will find someone in the federal establishment who has his hands in the wrong doing that at some point somebody said it would be helpful if you did x. the fact that x. was illegal is probably irrelevant to the contractor who says look i'm being paid to do what this government official tells me he wants to do the why are more lawmakers coming forward or members of the media for that matter and saying hey why don't we go through and have the d.o.d.'s say this is what money can go for and this is what it can well first of all the key operative word here is money everything is about money where it goes who makes it all of the contractors contribute to people's reelection campaign funds so members of the senate in particular to a lesser extent the house although it goes on there are very interested in

sustaining this gravy train called the defense budget not for reasons that they say publicly but because it's involves money remember people investing in the defense department have enjoyed enormous profits over the last ten years the defense establishment itself. you know is part of it but it's really these defense contractors the industries are making a profit margin or have a profit margin of about thirty to thirty five percent at this point everyone knows the defense budget is going to be cut so this is a last desperate effort to secure as much cash as possible from the existing budget before everything tanks and remember you know thirty to thirty five percent profit margin is enormous if they're going to be driven back to about fifteen to twenty percent profit margins which is certainly much more reasonable given the work they do for the american people but that's next year and the year beyond that. i mean i guess let's talk specifically about the question itself we've heard the word devastating used by secretary of state leon panetta we've heard manufacturers come

out and talk about the tens of thousands of jobs that will be lost talk about the real winners and losers in these defense cuts well first of all we know for instance with lockheed martin that made more money after it reduced its workforce in two thousand and seven the predisposition in the defense industries is not very different from any private industry in this country right now you cut the workforce in order to maintain your profit margins or even grow your right margin right exactly and then in the defense department when you look at the armed forces you shed soldiers sailors airmen and marines who could actually deploy and fight in favor of maintaining the overhead of generals and admirals and that ratio is by the way higher today than it's ever being world war two we had roughly one army general for every six thousand troops today we have one army general for every fifteen hundred troops oh wow so you're about an enormous overhead that the cold war created and that cold war overhead has actually grown over the last ten years so

we're we have this enormous number of single service headquarters inside the armed forces as well as various joint task forces all of this they will work to protect before anything else they will cut the soldiers who deploy and fight that's the tragedy a number of policy changes of course to be talked about but we can't talk about this without also talking about the politics i know the obama administration of course very concerned they thought that this was a last ditch. bill in order to to keep lawmakers accountable and yet it looks like it could happen and it could happen even though both republicans and democrats voted for this we should mention it's going to happen the vote at least was on obama's watch so he's nervous but then this is really interesting because you have republicans who you know the two things that they're loyal to low taxes and the defense department possibly having to make a choice and i want to play a really quick part of an exchange that happened recently this is

a panel of defense contractors a few weeks ago here on capitol hill. the specific question i asked was who here would advise the congress to rule out under all circumstances any revenue increase on anyone at any time would any of you make that recommendation yes i think everything is going to be on the table at this point now this is not this is a personal opinion i think i'm speaking for the employees of united technologies or for you t.c. . so here you have a you know a democratic congressman saying you know do you think this is advisable and even the defense contractor saying nothing's off the table that includes raising taxes well i wouldn't hold my breath while i waited for that to happen you don't you know first of all raising taxes does not offset declining revenues if you raise taxes whatever hope there is and i don't see very much right now in terms of coming out of the current recession i think things over the next two years are going to get much much worse and the only way to survive this is to dramatically cut federal

spending so the point is we're going to cut the defense budget long before we go after medicare medicaid social security and even even under seaquest ration there's about a two percent reduction in medicaid for instance but generally speaking medicare and social security are largely untouched but they too inevitably will end up on the table the point is you can't save us from the fiscal disaster that lies on the horizon by raising taxes revenue is declining it's not going to increase so i think it's kind of a dead dead tissue it's not worth discussing another thing that is worth discussing the other aspect of this defense budget it's not just fueling the funding to contractors like blackwater at any there's also a lot of programs if you look across the country of iraq right now there are empty abandoned prisons prisons that were supposed to hold you know three thousand prisoners you have abandoned hospitals things that were built with money never used you have programs like the iraqi prison program that came out recently iraqis don't

even want the iraqi police program so talk a little bit about. other useless ways in which this money is spent. the american people have been led for the last ten years by i would say actually for the last twenty by administrations who insisted that they could transform not americans primarily in the third world in the balkans into anglo-saxon democrats it's a lot of nonsense it's a miserable for. they are it's an open secret why would they do this well some of it is utopianism that we do suffer from inside the beltway but a lot of it again goes back to money were who had the contracts where did the money go who made money as a result we could talk about how a burden and a whole range of firms that have profited enormously again there is no accountability in the city when's the last time we held general officers accountable for the fact that iraq today is an iranian satellite we said we were going to transform it into this anglo-saxon democracy that would ultimately be

friendly to the west and friendly to the united states and today iraq is effectively an iranian client state who are we kidding this is this is part of a much larger problem and money that we've spent has simply being squandered and lost right certainly so much to talk about i think you have a really good point there u.s. army colonel douglas macgregor executive vice president of the berkman greater group well that's going to do it for now for this evening but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america he should also check out our website r.t. dot com slash usa and you certainly follow me on twitter you can find me at christine friends out on thank you for watching now have a great night.