there are some new faces in congress today the one hundred thirteenth congress is now in session and there's no time to spare the debt ceiling sequester ation and the american public's general disdain for their lawmakers are all things that should be dealt with all speak to one man who says there is room for hope. talk is cheap but not if you're an inmate at some american prisons calling home good results and phone bills that are twenty four times as much as normal call rates now the f.c.c. is addressing these unjust phone rates we will dial in on the issue. and get ready for a locked and loaded debate numerous teachers in ohio are signing up to get yet another certification under their belt but this one has nothing to do with their a.b.c.'s

or arithmetic details of the armed teacher training program coming up. this thursday january third a five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching our team. well yesterday president barack obama signed the twenty thirteen national defense authorization act despite threats that he might veto the bill he then released a statement saying in part that he's approved the annual defense authorization legislation as he's done in previous years because it authorizes essential support for service members and their families it renews a vital national security programs and helps ensure that the united states will continue to have the strongest military in the world now the president went on to say he signed the law because he supports the majority of the provisions but he

does not agree with all of them and then name several of those but he disagreed with section five thirty three for example because he says a mill in the military already protects the freedom of conscience and others like sections ten twenty seven and ten twenty eight because they limit the powers of the executive branch to mention anything about section ten twenty one of one of the most controversial aspects of the n.d.a. the twenty twelve version of the bill gave the military the power to arrest and hold people including americans without charge and without the writ of habeas corpus. now california senator dianne feinstein had introduced an amendment in december that would have forbidden indefinite detention of americans and it passed in the senate but it was later stripped from the final version of the bill and the executive director of the a.c.l.u. responded to all of this by saying this was a major fail on the part of the obama administration quote his signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial as well as illegal military

commissions will be extended he also has jeopardized his ability to close guantanamo bay during his presidency scores of men who have already been held for nearly eleven years without being charged. with a crime including more than eighty who have been cleared for transfer may very very well be imprisoned unfairly for yet another year the president should use whatever discreation he has in the law to order many of the detainees transferred home and finally step up next year to close guantanamo and bring a definite end to indefinite detention. that end doesn't appear to be anytime soon this newly signed law could be an early sign that despite a fresh start we could be looking at more of the same from president obama's first term. after one of the least productive terms of congress in history the one hundred twelfth congress is now behind us and one hundred thirteenth sworn in today one of the most important aspects of what business actually gets done and when

house to do with the rules now every new congress the house of representatives votes on new rules but the other chamber the senate rarely ever does we've heard they actually may do so this year though just try to prevent a supermajority from being necessary to pass anything through the senate and change some of the rules surrounding the filibuster while the sunlight foundation is recommending that they look at many other of its rules and i think it's fair to say most of these recommendations shine a light on the need for the senate to be more transparent it is after all a twenty thirteen you know this is the time where people travel to work on wife i excessive trains reading their i pad while listening to their i pod while checking twitter on their smartphone and yet quite a bit of official business of those we elect in pay to represent us is not posted online and easily accessible to the public i've got daniel schulman policy counsel with the sunlight foundation here to talk more about this and daniel talk to me about some of the most significant changes that you think the senate should make to

better represent the people well i think the most important change is right now the senate thinks of itself and really saw as one of the all this continuing deliberative bodies they don't think of themselves oftentimes in terms of what the public needs with their needs to be is a presumption of openness where if you go to a senator or a committee or to the chamber itself and you say i want this information that the risk the default answer is yes i'd be happy to give it to you here it is oh well we've got all these argue rules and procedures against why we can give you know against why we can't give them to you i think that's really the first person into star and from there all of our other recommendations follow. yeah and i think you outlined several different things and it's really interesting because as we know when our lawmakers get into the nitty gritty of this process turning a bill into a law there are often amendments added and i know you guys suggest you know having those amendments that are added available in a timely fashion you guys also recommend you know just having a staff directory why do you think this is important well you know it's astonishing how much information is not available that should be you would think that

amendments which all of the members can see something that we the public would be able to see in real time because after all when things are happening when people are watching your show for example to find out what's going on they should be able to go and look at the bill were look at the amendment or look at the reports on what's going on and be able to communicate effectively and intelligently with their elected representatives but all too often this information is either later not available at all and that is simply that is not acceptable yet it's really interesting we were just talking about the n.d.a. and that's a bill that was signed for the first time on new year's eve two years ago and a lot of the amendments you know we talk about this bill i mean they're much thicker than you know the paper that i'm holding right here and so to get really through them it takes a long time and often you know the public and the media doesn't get a chance to do so until they've already been passed i mean do you think if these amendments were posted that people would take a more active role in their government to take a more active role in kind of trying to figure out what those you know paid to resent represent them are doing i think that's i think that's where i think people

would pay because well they already are paying close attention they're already frustrated by their lack of access now a couple things would happen one is that of course there are all the lobbying organizations and many of them already have somebody on the inside they already have someone who can find out what's going on with the rest of us or those who don't have these highly effective highly you know well paid folks don't have the same access to information so what we're really proposing is leveling the playing field and it's not just us it's the amendments it's access to oftentimes what's happening in the committees in the subcommittees if you can't see how the sausage is being made you can see who's putting something in. and we really need to know that kind of information and i think that's a good point and i think it's even when it is available and i do know this but you guys kind of laid out in terms of some of these public documents the process that it takes he said public documents held by the secretary of the senate for public review can only be a to obtained by printing them during a visit to the senate office of public records on capitol hill. d.c.

is not even a state so people who live in d.c. this might be a little more convenient to go to capitol hill and knock on the door and you know prints and things out the majority of people in this country live in the fifty states including some of them on the other side of the country in order for them to get access to some of these public documents they would need to fly to d.c. and do this it's ludicrous not only do they have to fly to d.c. but they have to pay to access these records and they're already know they're trying to have some way how much ten cents a page wow and of course these bills as we know are hundreds and hundreds of pages you're not going you know for the legislation you can get but it's for all the ethics report so it's filings about oh i have to hire an attorney because i'm you know i think unethical behavior or here's where i've been traveling is you know where my stuff i've been traveling on these particular kudo's things like that you have to go and pay to have access to the personal financial disclosure reports for the members so you have a choice either you don't get to know what's going on you do get to know what's going on because you use a pay service that send someone in there to print out a ten cents a page or you have the money in the where with all they go and travel to travel to

washington and collect yourself none of these circumstances make any sense this information is already available electronically to the senate all the have to do is use something that we've been using in the u.s. for twenty twenty five years and put it online and yeah really that's the internet and you know there's plenty of eager you know interns on capitol hill that could use a scanner or you know it seems very easy let me ask you this i mean you say it's ludicrous i think it sounds kind of shady i mean why do you think this hasn't been done yet oh well it's obvious right it's because they don't want people to have access to this information it's this. but it's obscurity so it's hiding information in a particular kind of way that's why they make people travel down there that's why it makes it hard for reporters to be able to tell the kinds of stories that need to be told for citizens to get the information that they really need to have yeah even reporters who are in d.c. or even a working in the capitol building it's not always easy these are great ideas but how likely is it that that this will actually change at this lashley happen depends

on public pressure you know members of congress don't like to waste money i know may seem perhaps otherwise it times but you have to pay to have someone staff the room so that people can go there to access this information you have to members of congress just to you know if you want to get it from you you have to pay to get it this is this is wasteful let me give you a great example so there's all members of the senate are required to file campaign financial disclosure reports so how does this work they go they file this information with the senate most of the time it's handwritten sometimes it's printed in the f.e.c. has to come print the information out and then reeky it and it cost a couple hundred thousand dollars to see this every election cycle there is no reason for this if they simply allow senators to file this information out where is the tea party on this they should be outraged they should be outraged and we'd love to hear more from them being outraged on it but this is not an issue you know there are a lot of issues that sort of flying through the radar people don't want to talk about process you know it's the sausage being made sometimes it can be a little esoteric but when you look at it when you look at the details the process

is what determines the outcome if you could see every dollar that was spent by the federal government that would be something that's very powerful even side of the government they don't really have a sense of where all the money's going if you could see all the congressional research service reports it be easier to understand all of the issues that congress is considering but you can't if you could see the amendments were working their way through the process you would have a better sense of what's going on and be able to make sure that like what we just just happen with the fiscal cliff that all of these little pork provisions were necessarily inserted oh let me interrupt you for one second we're almost out of time but both the house house and senate. i think it's important to mention because a lot of people watching are probably saying well you know members of the house and senate deal with sensitive information they can't always make public some of this classified stuff that they're talking about really though daniel how much of what they're working on it is actually classified or you know top secret vast majority of it is not i mean if you're looking at members payroll that's not top secret if

you're looking at a builder voting on that's not a top secret if you're looking at the committee report that supports it that's not a top secret either almost all of this information is information that should be available to the public this is about making policy not just available but easily searchable and yet available online in real time so you have access to it when you need it the most if you don't do these kinds of things in the nineteenth century it made sense to do things by the way you had pony express you had the mail things took weeks to happen but now you have a bill that's introduced in two or three days later can be voted upon you need to have access in real time so people can communicate to their to their representatives really really interesting ideas and i think you're right not enough people are talking about this and therefore not enough people are outraged about it daniel schulman policy counsel with the sunlight foundation thanks so much thank you. i want to talk now about yet another example of where the prison industry in this country continues to rake in the dough and on the backs of taxpayers the incarcerated and also their families for those who for whatever reason find themselves behind bars phone calls home are virtually the only way to contact the

outside world but those calls to family and friends are costing a pretty penny and state presence and i put this in a little bit of perspective the basic plan from cricket wireless is four cents a minute for long distance or unlimited phone calls and texting for thirty five dollars a month the federal prison system costs twenty three cents a minute and here's where it gets a little outrageous a scoll in a georgia state prison for example via the private company global tell link cost a dollar and thirteen cents a minute that's about seventeen bucks for a fifteen minute phone call well it's the families that incur the cost the phone companies in the state prison systems they are reaping the profit even the present the federal prison system which charges much less still makes money off the calls now the federal communications commission is taking note of these exorbitant fees and after several years of putting the issue on the back burner they've agreed to look into the problem earlier today i was joined by peter ragnor executive director of the prison policy initiative i asked him to break down some of the main issues

for us so the problem is that these three private telephone control almost the entire market first phone calls home from prison and they negotiate exclusive contracts with the state prison systems and in exchange they can charge whatever they want now normally in a competitive bidding process the government might be organization that offers the cheapest price but here are the states pick companies that provide the highest price because built into that price commission which is just a fancy word for a kickback a large portion of every phone call goes directly back to the states coffers individual states how the incentive to make sure that they hire a company that will charges much is possible this is an interesting process in the f.c.c. has now released a proposed rule making more than a decade after this problem first came to light i mean is this rule making something that actually has teeth. well it can be we don't know yet what this what

the f.c.c. has finally done is formally acknowledge that this is a problem and they formally acknowledged that they want to figure out what they can do and they started a process of public comment for sixty days and then ninety days replied comments so this is really the time when the public can say to the f.c.c. this is what we want you to do this is how we want you to do it and at the same time this is how the three private prison telephone companies which are backed by equity banks are going to come in and say no don't do this leave us alone it's really interesting because there are a lot of people who would sort of look at this case peter and they would argue you know inmates choices shouldn't be first priority here that the administrators of these prisons should get the final say what's your response to that we are unfortunately can't trust the administrators and prison systems to choose phone contracts don't make any sense because they're financially benefiting from them so they have a conflict of interest that the f.c.c. needs to protect poor families from because this is again it's not about what

people in prison do it this is about charging unbelievable rates to the poorest families in this country who want to maintain family ties i think that's a really interesting point that you're making here because on one level this story is about money it's about competition in the free market it's about a possible monopoly but it's also about something a little more bigger picture what actually may be you know in the best interest of society to have these prisoners be able to make phone calls home and to do so in a way that's affordable because you know studies have shown increased contact with family members yields positive results especially you know in preventing some of these prisoners from returning to prison once they're released talk a little bit about some of these you know nonfinancial aspects of the argument. one of the purposes of prison is to reduce crime but here we have because we have these private companies conclude colluding with state governments to charge poor families high rates what happens is families have to choose between keeping their family

together and paying other bills anything that the state does that breaks down family ties and makes people more likely to go back to prison increases the risk of crime and increases the risk to everyone in society regardless of their connections to the criminal justice system so how much the profit motive here is creating a really short sighted risk that hurts everyone so we can complain about some of the issues here some of the problems here but i want to talk about the process of finding a solution there are very few companies that run this type of business as you said i think there's a three major ones how can a market rate be set for the price of phone calls from prison well normally the free market could intervene and people could pick which phone company they want to use that's what you and i do on the outside we pick one our cell phone company is we pick our landline company but you can't do that in the prison context because the state does the choice for you so there can't be regular free market competition

so what we need to do instead is to establish a price cap incentive all contracts must be below a certain rate and in new york state for example when they bend the case back in the state is required to give the company the contract to the company that can offer the lowest rate the rates of the lowest in the ratio nation of five cents a minute the calls are monitored the calls are secure it's profitable for the company but the families are able to afford to maintain ties to their loved ones so new york and the federal system are really the model here and why do you think it took so long to sort of have the f.c.c. get back to this problem and you know what's the likelihood that they'll actually get something done this time around. i suspect the f.c.c. took a long time to do this because we're talking about a problem a disproportionately affects poor people and poor people do not have a lot of political clout in this country but the f.c.c. has finally responded to the political pressure and announced this procedure we're going to start to take comments and figure out exactly what the rule should be in

what they're released to be done in december it's many pages of questions and things they want to permission on and that's what we need to be submitting to them in the next sixty days and we're going to respond to what the prison telephone industry says in response to certainly looks like at the very least the foundation has now been laid for a discussion about this issue and perhaps in the very near future that they'll move forward on this appreciate having you on the show peter wagner executive director of the prison policy initiative thanks for having me well it's been nearly three weeks since a mentally unstable twenty year old shot his way through the locked doors of sandy hook elementary school in newtown connecticut shooting twenty young children and six adults before taking his own life since the incident there have been calls to change current policies regarding gun rights with many they going for stricter rules for those to get guns even some of the n.r.a. the biggest supporters have said the time has come to revisit to gun policy in america the national rifle association had a different take summed up basically by this the only way to stop

a monster from killing our is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. well a new program seeks to follow this idea it's called the armed teacher training program free firearms training for teachers and school administrators put on by the buckeye firearms foundation in the state of ohio as are six hundred people have signed up from states including ohio but also arizona california florida illinois west virginia and new jersey is not just futures it's little straighter is critical superintendent's office staff guidance counselors. folks food service people transportation people the pilot training program would include

a cross-section of those who already have a concealed carry permit to those who have little to no experience with guns it will be extensive and tailored to help school officials prepare for school violence like what took place in connecticut earlier today i spoke with jim hansen a military blogger with black five dot net i asked him for his thoughts on this alarming issue. well first of all amidst a cornucopia of really bad ideas to try and solve this horrendous problem i think this is actually a good one i mean not all teachers are in any way going to be suited for this but the ones who are i think given the choice between unarmed victims and armed people who may as well in here said be able to actually stop a shooting like this why not and we you know we should mention this is a voluntary program but when you look at the facts and you look especially at history i mean arming people isn't necessarily a disincentive for shooters and might actually put passers by in more danger we saw of course what happened with the times square shooting back in august and new york

city and nine people injured because you know the police got involved and they had their guns and you know accidentally shot people who they thought may or may not have been suspects we had you know the fort hood shooting this took place on a military base where there's plenty of weapons and that didn't stop so many victims none of those people of fort hood had their weapons with them because they were essentially disarmed by the u.s. military the problem is if you look at three of the four last mass shootings they occurred in gun free zones you know you always think about the victims they were definitely gun free they were bullets filled there was no women are criminals don't follow laws crazy people don't follow laws so the idea that you can put a sign on the wall this is gun free zone what you've done is create security theater you've done absolutely nothing as far as making people safe so the idea that disarming victims and creating pools of people who can't defend themselves is a good idea isn't a good idea what about though the notion i mean that this would change the face of

the society that we live i think we have to think about you know what kind of future we want for our children do we want them to attend schools with armed teachers that you know what happened in newtown certainly was tragic it was devastating and disgusting but but is this the kind of country that we want to live in that. as armed teachers at our school if i have to choose between armed teachers or dead school children i'll take on teachers every single time it may not solve the problem it's definitely not a panacea there are plenty of other issues related to this mental health probably being a more prevalent problem but if you're going to say that having an armed teacher is somehow putting the children at risk we already trust them with our children's lives but why not give the opportunity to protect them if that horrendous situation occurs i think you have to look at what you know having armed teachers with then bring on i mean i think it would bring on the fact that many of these teachers could be slightly mentally unstable and after a rough day with the first grade class could go reach for the gun you know how do

we prevent that is not going to involve you know boat loads more paperwork and things that you know for our here chemistry teacher obviously is smart of to make cyanide and could lock the door and kill all the kids if he wanted to anyhow so i don't think the idea that guns are the issue creates a bigger problem the problem is if you create gun free zones if you create places where you disarm the law abiding citizens and innocent victims without offering anyone a chance to stop it look at virginia tech how long did that guy roam around the campus shooting people because nobody had a gun. so i mean i guess what do you think i mean do you think not only elementary schools but colleges and everywhere i mean is there anywhere that that you know people there shouldn't have guns bars drunk people probably shouldn't have guns but i think law abiding people should give the last time i read it the second amendment says the right to keep and bear arms that doesn't mean in

a locked cabinet at home or it doesn't do any good downtown d.c. where we're sitting right now is one of most dangerous places on earth and yet i don't have a right to carry a weapon around here because the d.c. city council doesn't trust me with a gun me with a gun is a safe boo for the rest of society there are other people like me and if they're trained if they're background checked and authorized to carry weapons they make the world a safer and better place and for the most part i mean i would think that you know a lot of people do have the best intentions in mind but it only takes you know one person as we saw in the case of newtown. you know to make these bad decisions i mean is there a way to even begin to regulate this there is no way to make perfection we expect perfection in this society and we think you can take any problem and remove all the risk and make the world perfect can't do it so you do the art of the possible the art of the possible says if you disarm people you create a pool of victims if you allow people who have been properly vetted to go ahead and

exercise the right we all have the constitution you at least have a chance to defend your side i want to go back to something you were talking about as far as washington d.c. you said it's one of the most dangerous place that has one strict strictest gun laws in the nation at work i just ended the year with the lowest crime rate since one nine hundred sixty one so it is in fact and not the most dangerous or just because it had five hundred thirty two gun homicides this year and yet they have completely restrictive gun laws in chicago you can make laws you can't make criminals and crazy people follow so i mean the idea that you can regulate this away is a farce just last question for you jim i mean what. we saw three weeks ago at newtown we saw a december that saw some of the highest gun sales in history we saw. you know more people buying guns and ever and then this program the armed teachers program we saw at least so far six hundred people signed up why do you think that is people assume that barack obama and the liberals in congress are going to do what they promised which is make some extremely dumb rules which have absolutely no effect on people's

actual safety so trying to get ahead of the power curve buy a gun now because you may not be able to get one later all right always interesting to talk to you i think it's important to get all these perspectives out there jim hansen a military blogger black five thought that well the phrase if you don't have anything nice to say about something someone don't say anything at all doesn't normally extend to journalism except in the case of glenn beck back of course is a former fox news host to most recently made headlines for trying to sell a jar filled with his urine on a toy of barack obama for twenty five thousand dollars clearly he enjoys controversy and do that again this time he's abandoned his employees at his news and entertainment network the blaze for mentioning the president by name because back is sick and tired of hearing about barack obama here he is talking about not talking about the president on wednesdays radio show so i don't know if you can play joe biden but i can't take the man's voice i don't want to hear him i don't

want to know about him. you want that information go anyplace else there's thousands of outlets now you can have all that information you want i'm not talking about that man anymore. quite the new year's resolution and not exactly the stuff great journalism is made of i'm going to be to have to report many political stories though without mentioning the name of the person at the center of them while that may be the first boss to publicly state that his employees can't say the president's name he's not the only one using political intimidation on them to work for him during election season we brought you stories from new york west virginia florida and where employers told their workers that a barack obama win would mean job cuts and decrease benefits now it seems voting for obama is the only thing with consequences and some work environments even saying his name could get you fired well breaking news that is coming up in thirty minutes here on our team let's check in with abby martin to see what's on the agenda today hey there abbie

a day that was ridiculous about going back filling the hole again and believe that today we are covering a lot of stuff we're going off the sandy hook tragedy of course but talking about the real systemic problems here of why there's this epidemic of mass violence in america we're going to talk about inequality we're going talk about the root problems of why this problem continues to happen in this country we're also to talk about conspiracy theories why are all these crazy conspiracy theories coming out of the sandy hook tragedy what do they all mean is there any truth to them and really what does it do to damage and siphon energy off a real movements real efforts against the government we're going to talk about all that and more break in the coming up next yes certainly a lot of conversation that was happening a couple weeks ago has sort of subsided should be interesting to see what is sort of taken up in terms of new laws and new policies abbie always good to talk to you thank you 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 or check out our web site r t v dot com.