despite a host of criticism against the bill the u.s. senate named unanimously passes the national defense authorization act but there's more to this legislation than meets the eye i'll tell you five things you need to know about and. if you thought taxes on your income were valid get ready for this uncle sam is looking for ways to fit the student debt crisis by taking money right out of borrowers paychecks a new solution to an old problem coming up. and you know the saying good deeds don't go unpunished if the man who appeared in my sixty's worked with him to christopher otherwise known as bitter number seventy he was sentenced to two years for trying to save a plot of land from oil companies one of the latest on his case and why he's being

told that he can't work for social justice programs. it's wednesday december fifth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for is out and you are watching our t.v. starting off this hour yesterday and a vote of ninety eight to zero the senate passed the national defense authorization act of twenty third team after five days of debate and hundreds of amendments considered many within the senate were proud of the progress made and the bipartisan support the bill had something frankly that's rather rare these days on capitol hill the bill now had to house senate conference committee well it will be discussed and differences between the house version of the bill hammered out however what exactly is within those six hundred and sixty eight pages while some of it might surprise you artie's liz wahl explains. the national defense authorization act or the n.p.a.

as it's commonly known as selfish is the budget for the us military but the massive bill also has many other provisions with major implications for your freedoms and lastly the senate unanimously passed the defense spending bill and a ninety eight zero vote now we have compiled the top five things you should know about this more than six hundred thirty one billion dollar bill in a number of five contractor agreements this is things to an amendment sponsored by senator ron wyden and what it does require the pentagon to disclose when it enters into indemnification agreements and this is where one party agrees to protect another party from being sued an example is the k.b.r. the largest military contractor a portland jury ruled that it must pay one hundred million dollars in damages for exposing veterans to toxic chemicals but the company is now suing the u.s. army corps of engineers because it says it's protected by an agreement with the pens a god and a number for cyber combat command this would require the pentagon to consult

lawmakers if it wants to raise u.s. cyber command to an all out come back and command in other words congress needs to know when warfare is shifting from cyber war to actual war. and another three embassy security provisions would also raise up to a thousand marine corps personnel to provide security idea with embassies this of course is in the wake of the tragedy in benghazi where a u.s. ambassador was among the americans killed in what was later determined to be a terrorist attack and a number two veteran mental health the suicide rate among members of the military is skyrocketing this past year there were more veterans suicide than total soldiers killed in afghanistan and iraq since those wars started an amendment to the n.c.a.a. would create a comprehensive suicide prevention program that would increase accessibility to mental health counseling and the department of defense and help mental health care

providers get better training and then at number one a get mo detainee transfer ban now this one is raising the most concern in the white house this provision would permanently banned the transfer of detainees detainees from guantanamo bay to the u.s. now the white house has dreads a veto any restrictions on its ability to transfer prisoners to other countries and that is exactly what this bill does well now that the bill has passed the senate it goes to a joint conference between the house and senate before it heads to the president's desk for his signature and as you've seen many aspects of it are controversial so it's likely its current form could change in washington liz wahl r.t. so leading up to the passage of the n.d.a. and there's been quite a bit of discussion and debate especially here at r.g.p. about two sections of it section ten twenty one and ten twenty two how far the government can go in terms of detaining people indefinitely as of now anyone who the president determines quote stand substantially supported the taliban al qaida

or quote associated forces could be designated as enemy combatants subject to indefinite detention and that includes u.s. citizens. senator dianne feinstein a democrat from california tried to fix that getting what's now known as the feinstein amendment inserted into the bill it's stated an authorization to use military force a declaration of war or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the united states apprehended in the united states unless an act of congress expressly authorizes such to tension for those who have been fighting to get u.s. citizens removed from this indefinite detention clause this seemed like a victory but now several people are coming forward and saying this doesn't just not to make things better it actually makes things worse let's go now to tangerine bowl and she's the founder and director of revolution truth tendering let's talk bigger picture here of this the bill passed in the senate and ninety eight to zero

despite some major concerns constitutional concerns your reaction. well i find i really disturbing it's unfortunate that congress has to passing so many unconstitutional provisions so very strange or should we have a judiciary. of course section ten twenty one ten twenty two the two most controversial sections but they're in compassed in a much larger piece of legislation anything you think tendering that will change for better because of n.d.a. . question you know it depends on how how things go. going forward but frank said a moment unfortunately that there's a lot of controversy about doesn't actually help and. that's a dangerous at worst and that's most a mash which is the gold standard for amending the n.c.a.a. is doesn't really look like it's going to get a lot of support on the floor so. i it's hard to say that anything is going to

change for the better at this point on the strengths and it is of course you know six hundred something pages you mention that what a lot of critics have been saying over the last couple days which is that it's going to make things worse and one of the things people are concerned about is that it sort of puts in writing the ability of the military to police the streets here not for u.s. citizens or people with green cards but for people you know that i work with every day people from other countries who have you know the right to be here they're here legally working but if the government wants to detain them indefinitely they can do so talk a little bit about this and some of the challenges you foresee if this is indeed what the law becomes. well actually first i'd like to clarify something because my own legal counsel will not concur with how you just characterize that they would partially concur and what they would say is essentially that yes there is a discriminatory aspect of this that the a.c.l.u. has just put forth which is of course the constitution protects all people in this

nation not just legal residents and citizens and so we have to address that issue but there are three other really prominent problems and einstein amendment it's even worse than what you just described and that is that first it extends the authority. to u.s. soil so contrary to what you said about this possibly not you know providing protection who are american citizens that's actually not our read i have at all and it's not the read of a bunch of other prominent civil liberties groups so that for disputes and further it calls for a trial but it doesn't stipulate what kind of trial that means we still can see people in military indefinite detention with no access to civil courts if ok as i hear yes really once again rather than the entire you know due process and that's problematic and lastly the language includes unless an act of congress authorizes indefinite military detention which sort of sounds like congress thinks that it can

actually pass a constitutional law which is i know they may try but that's not constitutional let me kind of break down what you just said first of all the a.u. i'm at the authorization for the use of military force for what i understand and i mean that it passed after nine eleven that's still in place right. of course it is yes and there is some question as to whether that can be applied to us it is that there was the only case that we can we can close in that regard is india who was detained just outside of the us so i don't think we have any case law that has really tried. does apply to us citizens. as well and i thought it was really interesting what you said too about the latter part of the fines an amendment which says in last congress passes the authorization to do so talk a little bit about that i mean about congress thinking that they can pass unconstitutional laws i mean what's the bigger implication here. gosh there are several and.

concerning you know congress really seems quite confused as far as. it's not really standing on the side of holding the rule of law and we've got to do that mchugh sometime oh you've mentioned that and we've got you in this interview which is that congress is now trying to make sure that there are no more transfers out of guantanamo if there are to us so i mean they really harm president obama says that he can't actually present out. further more and back to our case i mean that's really critical here is that i don't imagine it extends the conflation of the a and the end you know how hours of indefinite detention and this is a really critical point christine because if you know jamie from the get go in our case has gone out of its way to conflate those two laws and the powers of detention there and they are not the same we have proven that in court we won our case

showing that the n.c.a.a. actually radically extend expand its powers and yet the crimes i remember the way it's worded it continues that conflation and i think that this is really whether it's deliberate or not it's unfortunately an incredibly misleading it's letting the public think that these are powers of the same when no we suddenly have an a radical extension of powers and congress is not helping anything i want to talk about first of all the fact that the f.d.a. was passed unanimously of course when we talk about a couple of these controversial sections tucked into this larger defense spending bill i mean you know the long and short of it is a lot of senators the all of them who voted for it would say you know this keeps our troops funded keeps them safe sort of ignoring what you and what we had are to have been focusing on i've got to say that a whole lot of people people who watch the mainstream media people who are tuned in don't even really know much about the n.d.a.

at all why do you think it was that we didn't even see you know five senators not vote for this because of some of these controversial sections and why are the majority of american people not aware of you know section ten or twenty one in ten twenty two. oh i have two part answer to that and i think first and foremost there's too much playing politics on the hill there's so much heart isn't shipped here and really politics are great taking precedence over doing the right thing again and again. which is just reprehensible and secondly i fortunately there is a major breakdown in our mainstream media and we can even see that in our case where there is at least one major media your organization sort of the gold standard again that's country they know full well the radical discrepancy in words and stance in court with the d.o.j. on am as an n.d.a. they know that none of this makes sense of the out there they refuse to report the story so i just think there's

a systemic breakdown in the delivery it isn't as great an organization like yours so well as specially because this is something that you know unlike for example the casey anthony case in which media outlets spent exorbitant. hours and hours on i mean this is something that actually applies to and could impact the majority of american people and we are out of time tendering bolen founder and director of revolution truth thanks so much. and now on to an issue that has more than five million americans in dire straits student loans there is now more student loan debt than credit card debt in this country and entire cottage industry dedicated to collecting that debt the department of education pays about a billion dollars a year to debt collectors to track that money down and a new bill from representative tom petrie a republican from wisconsin would make some key changes to the way government handles student debt it would bring automatic withdrawals from borrower paychecks so that so that similar to those who are taxes that debt would be come right out of

people's checks but the payments would be capped at fifteen percent of a borrower's income after living expenses and also ties interest to treasury market rates it eliminates low income subsidies and also eliminates loan forgiveness for public servants now the strike team has been vocal about eliminating all kinds of debt in this country and replacing the collection agencies that harass people with forgiveness let's talk now to an larsen a strike debt activist about these ideas a little further and what do you think about this idea to use automatic withdrawals from borrowers paychecks to pay back student loans. well hi first of all thanks for having me and second of all this plan is really nothing more than a band-aid on a bullet wound we have twenty seven percent of student debtors who are already in default in this country it's millions of people people are paying these bills because they can't and this plan is not going to help them at all it doesn't do

anything for the trillion dollars of student debt that we are already have on the books and perhaps more importantly it doesn't address the exploding cost of higher education so i think that families sitting around the table wondering how they're going to afford higher education are looking at this plan and thinking what don't our elected representatives get about this what about i mean i haven't spoken to congressman petrie but the fact is he said i want to make it so this comes out of people's paychecks but it would be capped at fifteen percent of a person's income after living expenses you know it's not really. anyone's place to tell people how to spend their money but the fact is they borrowed this money they sent they signed promissory note that they would pay it back so if they have a job and it's fifteen percent or less of their income why not start to pay this back. well first of all this plan will not apply to current student debt or is it would only be for new student debtors that are just starting out in college and

secondly we need to talk about the fundamental question here which is is student debt legitimate debt is funding higher education something that we should do as a society or is saddling young people with tens of thousands of dollars in many cases over one hundred thousand dollars in debt is this something that we should support and something that we should do i mean i find it interesting that republicans who oppose any kind of tax increase and are particularly opposed to tax increases on millionaires and billionaires have no problem with turning the i.r.s. and employers into collection agents garnishing wages of people who are in student debt i think it's really important what you said and that is that if this is part of a larger discussion certainly there are specific components to it that should be discussed and debated as well but there are some people who believe that education in this country should be far less expensive or even free but how would that happen i mean how would one be able to get a free education in this country. publically funding higher education in the united

states would be very very inexpensive people don't realize how cheap it would be to do that we could fund all public two and four year colleges and universities for what the pentagon spends in about three months it would be about eighty billion dollars that is about what we're already losing in student debt defaults right now so this is not a matter of a lack of money this is a matter of political will it's a matter of how we fund public services i think it's interesting too when you sort of go through this and do some research the numbers and i think they tell an interesting story i want to go over since some system statistics this is according to bloomberg and the wall street journal on the cost of outstanding student loans has now reached more than a trillion dollars and it cost the government one hundred billion dollars a year ninety three percent of loans are made directly by the government another crazy number you mention the percentage of but it's actually five million borrowers are in default this is

a mess created by the government so do you think that should in fact be fixed by the government well it's a mess created by the government in cahoots with wall street bankers are very much involved in the student debt business even though now the federal government issues all student loans there's still private student loan debt there's still for profit colleges that that issue that we're students are taking out a lot of debt and i think so the fundamental question is how are we going to fund higher education in america we're already losing a billion a billion dollars in student debt defaults we could fund higher education for that for about seventy billion dollars but i do want to talk about some of these proposed ideas in terms of dealing with this problem not just sort of what you suggest which is the larger issue of totally funding education because it's have to come from somewhere in dealing with this problem to make up for interest counts the government wants to get rid of at least in this piece of legislation some subsidies like low income borrowers would accrue interest while in college i mean that

currently isn't the case what do you think would be effective changes like that. i think that i don't understand why you would cut why you would. this bill that's being proposed towards from congress is asking low income people who now have an option to stop paying their student loans after twenty five years of payment they would now no longer have that option so really this is just making sure that people have their wages garnished for potentially the rest of their lives i mean we met a family through our research and strike debt who's working class family their son had seventy thousand dollars in student debt and because their parents had cosigned on the loan he couldn't find a job and they're going to lose their house now i mean this has a real human cost for people in the fact that we don't have enough money to fund higher education and we have plenty of money for wars for bank bailouts that just doesn't make sense to us there's another part of the piece of legislation which actually ties interest rates to the treasury it seems like that would ultimately cost borrowers less money do you think at least that is something you'd be able to

get behind you know i think that tying the student debt to interest rates doesn't address the question should student debt be something that we saddle students with for years and decades of their lives is is public funding of higher education something that we want to get behind we know that wall street manipulates interest rates all the time i mean look at the library scandal we have trillions of dollars of global interest rates for student debt for me no simple bonds that have been manipulated by wall street i don't think that tying student debt to treasury interest rates makes sense all right certainly quite a bit quite a few proposals out there it is a larger discussion in washington that's been going on for some time in light of some of these really sort of in your face scary numbers regarding student debt certainly it is something that affects if not you know you somebody that you know that goes across the board really we appreciate your insight here and larson with

the strike that campaign in our new york studios. now on to a story of a man who helped prevent the government from acting illegally and continues to be punished for it back in two thousand and ten environmental activist tim de christopher was protesting outside of an oil and gas lease auction for rural land in utah to christopher enter the auction and signed up as a better here's how he explained what happened next i started out bidding just to drive up the prices and so i was being affective with that but also still seen that there was the opportunity to do more that i had the potential to actually windows parcels and possibly create enough chaos that things would still be up in the year for the new administration and that there was a chance that those parcels could be protected and that oil kept in the ground you know at the time i was thinking if i do this i'll probably go to prison for two or three years could i live with that and i thought yeah it would suck really bad but i could live with it while the christopher was arrested right after he won the

auction and here he talks a little bit about his trial. really big developments has been a motion by the prosecution to limit my defense. and to restrict me from using what's called an assessor the defense which is the argument that i was acting to prevent greater harm the judge granted their motion so now i'm not allowed to use that argument and there's actually some question as to whether or not i'll even be able to inform the jury that this auction has been reversed because the government admitted that it was inappropriate the first place well the president was sentenced to two years in prison and a ten thousand dollars fine for violating the federal onshore oil and gas leasing reform act and for making false statements well now christopher is in a halfway house in salt lake city utah after serving one and a half years in prison now he is able to work but when the unitarian church offered him a job the federal bureau of prisons denied to christopher chance why well because

the unitarian church has a social justice bend and christopher was imprisoned for his social justice work seems a little strange and confusing we would like to talk to the christopher himself but as part of his sentence he can't speak to the media without permission from the bureau of prisons so instead were lucky enough to have his attorney patrick say hey their project on the bureau of prisons is not letting the christopher work for the unitarian church what were their words when they denied him this opportunity. because the unitarian church is known for its social justice programs and because tomb was serving a prison sentence for having acted on his sense of social justice it thought it would be inconsistent is cruel aspirations so instead it he had to find another job is that right it was he able to find one he did he found a wonderful try and some others rare books or. others as distinguished

you try to do. what you. different people who. vote ts approaching the one the worst so there's a certain harmony but he does his social justice so i think the friends half good people in the group prisons will be satisfied so i mean it sounds like a fun job but it just seems interesting that working for a church which you know tries to help society is a place where somebody can't to get a job for whatever reason i know that when tim described the trial in his own words it seem to defy logic in some ways or at least didn't sound like a usual conception of justice how would you characterize the trial. i've practiced law for thirty six years and i would say in this instance in my personal judgment the end was determined before the trial actually began there were more than seven delays so the idea of

a speedy trial was not something that was our process and given the strict limitations of the judge and the defense counsel. was. we did i don't believe that we were able to really speak to the jury in a way. that we are entitled to about judges are very strict he the jury focused on the facts. and letting those individuals focus of the just focus on the law if you were back in the sixty's it wouldn't necessarily want the jury to be free to make up their mind but i think in the instance of a climate justice. there was not right for him to speak about his intentions the judge's ruling that discussion well i was hoping to you could sort of strain something out for me because i was following this case as it was happening and if i

remember correctly it happened on the auction happened under the presidency of george w. bush and after he left office the law that was in place was no longer so you know these these people would have been able to drill on the land anyways afterward so it seems to me that what tim did yes it might have prolonged thing on the timing and the time frame to talk a little bit about kind of the confusion here are over this i was director of the bureau of land management in the clinton the straight shooter so i'm very familiar with the. options and what was happening again in my judgment is that the ends of the bush administration they were pushing out as much drilling for their friends in the oil. industry is possible and it was reasonable to expect that the new administration was not going to be so lenient on putting out of a collapse of tim's actions when it stopped the very end that processes of the

clams in utah it was what we call all it takes a dinosaur and it's something that the going out of ministration lays into the future knowing that the do it ministration is not necessarily going to want to have to deal with it but out of necessity they will secretary salazar as a former attorney general wasn't particularly prone to be seen in his first few months in office as being lenient on a law breaker self admitted lawbreaker raised him very honestly declare and so nothing could be done other than the process to go forward and it was a process in the instance of the red state of utah where the u.s. attorney had been appointed by orrin hatch the judge had been appointed by or after and there wasn't really an equal scale of justice in my judgment was there out precedent here to convict christopher i mean has anyone else been in prison for not being able to back up a bit at a federal land auction there are twenty nine other bidders that just left in some

instances they canceled the check sometimes they canceled a credit card but none of them were prosecuted and we were not allowed to mention those twenty nine billion walkers is what the b.l.s. calls them. interesting let's talk now about this ban on social justice activities when would that include working on environmental causes has the bureau of prisons explained exactly what christopher isn't allowed to do. well that's why i mentioned from scaf to welcome to trial nobody the bureau of prisons has laid out for tim clearly what he can or can't do it's more you go ahead and see what you can do and they will review what you're proposing to do and from my point of view we're simply trying to get him out into the world he will have a three year term of parole but we're hoping that you who are part of the are going to school and even the bureau of prisons will see that as

a safe place just so we're almost out of time patrick but how is pat how isn't tim doing our spirits ok spirits are great too that you are he's lastly given came by to see him. sonders bookstore robert kennedy is going to come by and see him on friday so there are a lot of people if you're in salt lake go by counselors so you want to tune in christopher he really is a hero of this generation certainly a case that we've been following and we appreciate your time attorney patrick shea thanks so much if you she followed it absolutely well that's going to do it for us for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america you can also check out our website you can see from other things we covered a lot of things we didn't have a chance to get to and that's at r.t. dot com slash usa and you can follow me on twitter at christine for his hour want to thank you for watching we're going to be back here at eight pm eastern.