on the bus and. was going on everyone i'm abby martin and this is breaking in. the feeling that a regular cup of joe just isn't enough to keep you up anymore well the pentagon has a new solution that it's planning to try it on american soldiers and i know i say this a lot but the latest development is a little really shocking because they're planning to zap their brains with electricity that's right the pentagon has already begun to experiment with this new shock therapy which it says could keep the u.s. military's digital warriors and drone operators more alert the air force army and darpa are all participating in five separate studies with a price tag of two hundred grand a pop this government already relies on a video game methods to kill so is it turning soldiers in electrical conductors really the future of warfare i guess it's time we update that slogan part of waking

up is an electric shock to the dome and let's break the set. it was a. very hard to take a. look. at her how to act without her being there.

when it comes to natural beauty arizona has it all traveling around the state like sites like monument valley the painted desert the petrified forest all make you feel like in one thousand century cowboy and now there's another reason why it might seem like you went back in time to be eighteen hundreds while in the grand canyon state gold fashion coney indiscrimination so yesterday the arizona state legislature just passed a law allowing business owners to refuse service to gays and lesbians the naeyc will pay to females withhold birth control for unmarried women and skirt legal contractual obligations only name a religion yes that's right this wide ranging to korea allows individuals to skirt federal and state anti-discrimination laws that the reason for doing so is on account of religious beliefs arizona governor jan brewer has yet to decide if she will approve or veto the law and similar legislation scuse me has also been brought up in states like idaho tennessee south dakota and kansas but none of those bills

have actually passed state legislatures and as such arizona is poised to become the first state in the twenty first century to codify discrimination on such a large scale. and tovar the state democratic minority leader even went as far as saying that quote many arizona will find themselves members of a separate and unequal class under the law because of their sexual orientation this bill may also open the door to discriminate based on race familial status religion sex national origin age or disability but i guess we should expect this kind of medieval legislation from a state that has repeatedly had its laws overturned by the supreme court back in june the court struck down the requirement that said arizona had to provide proof of citizenship in the form of a birth certificate passport or another government id in order to register for federal elections despite the fact that no federal voting forms have this obligation the entire purpose of the law was to suppress minority votes according the a.c.l.u. in two thousand and eleven more than twenty one million americans or eleven percent

of the total population did not have government issued i.d.'s including twenty five percent of blacks versus eight percent of whites furthermore a study by the civil rights group advancement project found as many as ten million hispanics across the nation were affected by these laws during the two thousand and twelve election and all that were scary about voter fraud in the arizona republic comb through the voting records in phoenix and found that since two thousand and four there's been a whopping total of thirty four cases of fraud and only two of those cases involve undocumented citizens you also might remember about one of the photo zina phobic leadership of governor brewer arizona approved the most extreme immigration bill in the nation in two thousand and ten the law required that every immigrant have their alien registration cards on them at all times and allowed police to stop and question people merely if they had a reasonable suspicion that the individual was an undocumented immigrant because unfortunately people don't tend to where i'm in the legal immigrant name tags on

their shirt so he can never be too sure now thankfully most of us law was struck down by the supreme court in two thousand and twelve but codified racial profiling when it comes to. beagle's still a ok in the show me your papers state but believe it or not and even less veiled racist law was also passed in the state in two thousand and ten the law prohibited the teaching of mexican american studies in the city of tucson so the curriculum was all about scary subjects like mexican american literature multiculturalism and critical thinking but despite the fact that the program led to increased graduation rates high student achievement and was even recommended for an expansion after an independent state audit it just wasn't quite enough for conservative lawmakers and judges in fact last march a judge up held that the ban on mexican american studies was indeed constitutional in a state that used to be mexico but since then the tucson school district has revived the program but only due to

a federal court order mandating it so i guess arizona's new discrimination law is just a natural progression of what happens when sexual orientation and race intolerance is continually promoted by state government as sound legal policy because after all for arizona tourism board wants visitors to experience that old eighteen hundreds wild west feeling it's got to be authentic. earlier this week yet another banker died in the alleged suicide this time in hong kong thirty three year old lady has become the eighth banker to join a list of deaths within the financial sector since late january. is the third j.p. morgan employee to commit suicide in recent weeks raising questions over what is leading the string of high profile debts but should these debts be looked at in

a vacuum or are they symptomatic of a cutthroat industry that thrives on pressure stress and results of our two financial show boom bust and aid joining us. it was. understood that thrives on stress pressure and i. definitely believe me all those same symptoms here i call us the the and pats and i call the wall street the sociopath there i was at the same spectrum very high stress environments we care too much they care too little it's a big problem when you marry one. parent you know you you have ties to wall street you know you know a lot of wall street bankers what is the root to this you know audience a really good question i don't think it's just one thing i think it's a variety of things i think that you know bankers go in glamorizing and cliques like wolf of wall street and boiler room and even michael lewis's liar's poker which is kind of like the gospel that let a lot of these people from these institutions to wall street they expect so much

and then they get there and particularly as lowly analyst they're not getting paid what they thought and yes they're getting paid a tremendous amount of money and you should have little sympathy for that but when you when you're expecting so much and you have glamorized anything whether it be your wedding or your new puppy you're going to be let down right i mean these people are looked at as dollar signs i mean their whole expectation is to surpass their prior year profit on their cause they try and there's pressure on them to maximize their bottom line if they don't do that they're looked at as what's your what greater role here why are you doing that yes you know going back to wolf of wall street i mean even though people have said that it's a little bit sensationalist is it really i feel like it's very indicative of the pressure put on the industry sex drugs gambling i have to say i do know a lot of people in the financial services industry and i do think that yes jordan belfort was a real guy and yeah he did all of that but i don't think that everyone is like that i think a lot a lot of people today what they're jumping off of buildings but here's the thing you know we were talking about this earlier. before people have and that's reported

extensively relative to how many suicides are committed that's a big deal but it is a little sensationalized i will fairly say that however yeah it does it does drive it. driven industry which guys need to be the biggest baddest toughest a ton of athletes out of college go into banking it is a fosters that type personality you bring up a really good point which is that we're seeing all these bankers suicides and we're saying oh what's going on in radio giant conspiracy they have to be you know is there another impending financial collapse that they know about that we don't and really there's thousands of people that commit suicide every day they don't they're not millionaires so they don't get the headlines really everyone is a human being we all need resources we need to help with if we need it and in this industry i just feel like you have alpha males the pressures on you you can't seek out help i mean you're considered weak in the industry if you try to say like hey you know i'm depressed i'm sorry sidled if you like a lot of you know you look at it in the right the position and what's even sadder though is that you know there's a lot of industries like ours where you are

a long hard hours and you are compensated like a banker or but think of a doctor who has worked all night but he might save someone he or she and they might get a thank you they might not. but they might get a thank you their bankers they have about an average about twenty percent now here's this is actually a real stat here we have here bankers they only do about a deal to or two dots in a quarter that ever closes tops a deal to two if you close three deals and one quarter you are rocking it like no one else so imagine spending your time in your energy all day every day on a project that you know full well will never come to fruition after a while yeah your bombed out and that dollar sign if you're getting paid in restricted stock not the cash flush ways that it was in the eighty's and the wall for wolf of wall street is really bomb us a point and you know i think the culture you know here we have a country that's run by a corporatocracy that's essentially run on the financial boot in the pressure isn't necessarily on these c.e.o.'s are going to get bailed out i mean it's a total joke it's put on the p.r.

and. a lot of pressure and really you know as well as i do living in d.c. your job is your identity yes it makes up who you were. you know it's just not time i mean i'm sure a lot of people you meet people who are there like what do you do and then if you if their eyes just glaze over it's like oh you can't help me financially or politically that you know i mean it really is a house of cards and consideration and really like i think the stakes are so high that these people feel like they're losing their job or their identity i mean what else do they have to go on exactly i do it it gets to another point that bankers a lot of the time and this is this is coming from a banker that i love my husband who says that it's hard sitting at a table sometimes and people asked what do you do and you say you're in finance and the whole table is kind of revolt and while he kind of turned it. down firmly behind the back of the matter is that's not going to make you feel great and i think that there's a lot of that going on. in the financial services industry and you know that's such a good point as you're because your husband so awesome he's so and he's so great he

clearly has empathy and it brings me back to this study that i was reading psychology today that one out of every twenty five normal people are sociopaths and that's sort of normal normal and then according to see if a magazine one of ten people on wall street are sociopaths i mean this is a lack of empathy no regard for consequences unbridled risk taking i mean what if that isn't a hundred wall street c.e.o. that i don't know if it's i mean i'm not sure. if you're not as sociopath like your husband this could be a really depressing job where you're thinking what the hell what is going on i mean you know what i contributing to all these things you can really it can really get you and i doubt that every single person on there is a sociopath even those as much as i need to take the i don't you know you might assume that you generalize all of all but i mean really you know i think that there's all this pressure and when your boss you're when you're reporting to a psychopath and i'm not one exactly my friend are very hard to communicate. but still crazy so you know what what is it about the financial system that just breeds

this and what can be done to stop it and i mean honestly i think it's a lot of it is it's testosterone driven industry so what can be done to stop it they're trying to take the. now you know a lot of banks have said that you know we can have interns working twenty hour days and we got to give them at least one tail weekend off i mean it's a step it's a step in the right direction make no mistake that they won't get paid the same amount as they were i think at least it's a step in i mean it's not for everyone that's for sure at the end of the day we're all humans we all need help resources no matter what job you're working out and you know suicide's a real serious matter of thank you for coming on shiny new i don't it any thank you you guys coming up a shine a light on the world of shadow lobbying state to. scarf

or some. such thing and the finish line of the marathon. well

that. might work here in the morning for. washington d.c. is one of the most expensive cities in america and if you look at all the business suits walking between k. street and capitol hill you think that the city is practically recession proof which might have something to do with the high concentration of lobbyists and billions of lobby dollars that are peddled to the city every year have record of the watchdog website open secrets dot org for the third year in a row overall spending on lobbying has actually decreased to three point two billion dollars along with the official number of registered lobbyists in just over twelve thousand and rational lobbying experts however argue that lobbying isn't decreasing at all and instead it's simply going underground or earlier i spoke to investigative journalist for the nation lee phone who just published an article

called where have all the lobbyists gone and he takes a closer look at what's been coined the shadow lobbying complex i first asked him why the numbers posed on open secrets don't reveal the full story. well the numbers you are seeing are hokum secret which is a fantastic website reflect the. official lobby registration system bets maintained by the house and senate the problem is just the statute the lobby disclosure act is riddled with loopholes. there are many ways for lobbyists to evade the law and simply put. there are many incentives for lobbyists to register and the law does not cover all lobbying activity so the real figure on how many lobbyists are in d.c. that are actually attempting to influence policy is closer to a hundred thousand not twelve thousand and experts say of the amount spent is not

three billion but closer to maybe six nine or even ten billion unbelievable and you're talking about all these loopholes in the lobbying disclosure. act named after former senate majority leader tom daschle will why is he the face of unregistered lobbyists. well senator tom daschle all left the senate joined a private equity also joined a law and lobbying firm alston and bird is now another one called. he's become the face of the problem because everyone knows that tom daschle will lobby use that he meets with government officials that he meets with president obama that he coordinates meetings with legislators with policy folks and businesses from health care and energy to other sectors and he does this openly . and at the same time he does not register so given his prominence in washington

d.c. you know helping president obama with this health care overhaul. associated with many different think tanks that are constantly in the news and. it different functions in the city he does all this while flouting the law you know one of the most damning things about the article is that connection to the plan to have retailers like gap skirt around responsibility for the bangladesh garment factory collapse that killed more than a thousand people the i was wonder if you could elaborate on that connection. sure we go through many different anecdotes but this is one of the more tragic ones of how our own registered lobbyist paddle in florence and the public and the press is clearly kept in the dark about who the real paymasters are so for this example if you look at the last last year last summer when. asked in the aftermath of the latest major building collapse in bangladesh many european

retailers offered a very strong claim to increase of building inspections to make sure that garment manufacturers. or the retailers that pay to garbage manufacturers are liable for these types of disasters well american companies like gap and wal-mart and j.c. penney did not like. any of these reforms they wanted to counter them they didn't want to pay for any of these necessary upgrades or be liable for future disasters so they had d.l.a. piper dash was firm and go out and sell that alternative plan but it does not keep them on the hook for any future liabilities saving them a lot of money but potentially causing more death and pain in the future so what's interesting here is as d.l.a. piper lawyers and officials went around the city selling this alternative weak

labor clare no one knew that they were being paid by jack one of the big companies that refused to play ball. that's just another example of of the shadow lobbying complex that you have folks selling policy selling influence and affecting the way that these policies are acted without registering and without disclosing if you listen to their rhetoric or when they're walking around the city selling this plan they said that they are with based they are affiliated with think tanks or they are you know simply former government officials no one knew who was really behind this plan simply because they did register yeah and you give the series a dozens of examples here i mean this is just one of the go the layers and layers and layers as you're talking about right now is there a way to investigate as i mentioned the house ethics committee overseeing the process of following up with those who are unregistered and still participating in lobbying. that your great question and this was actually the most surprising part

of reporting the story i've covered lobbying and influence peddling for about five years now and i did not know that the enforcement mechanism to. the lobbying disclosure act of basically has no cop on the beat there's never been a criminal important case brought ever there have been virtually no civil cases either and that's because the only people owe overseeing this process of making sure people register and comply with the wall there's only one full time employee at the department of justice that's a contract paralegal who basically just processes them forms some other kind of file keepers and connor's also look into this but if you simply don't register and you continue influence peddling there's. there's no unfortunate matters which is to go after folks. and so i guess you know the answer probably lobbyist says don't register at you know we another thing the article you point out is the rebranding

efforts on behalf of the lobby ministry can you give some examples of these and how remaining institutions have changed their perceived role. i think if you look at public polling americans are incredibly upset about the role of big money in politics the way lobbyists have taken control of the political process has really taken control of both political parties and to kind of combat growing cynicism whether from occupy or the tea party rather than changing their behavior or complying better with the law lobbyist or have stead simply changing their image changing their names of their titles so for example the american legal lobbyists the professional association for lobbyists in november changed their name to the government affairs associates or government affairs professionals so that's a much more vanilla name to take the l. word out of if they don't want to be called lobbyist they call themselves other euphemisms like public affairs associates or government affairs government as

government relations that type of thing you know i want to point to just one thing tank here in d.c. the employment policies institute sounds very innocuous a widely quoted economic research center pushing the notion that increasing the minimum wage would increase poverty and it's backed by the national restaurant association lead the polarization of issues in this country can be blamed on ideological front groups backed by massive lobbying efforts. and i think you hit the nail on the head there you know a lot of the political debates you see on television in the media are not much more than political theater propped up by characters who are saying what they're saying who are pushing a certain policy because someone's paying them then you don't know who they are they'll say oh this is. to help the democrats or to help the republicans but in many cases they're pushing a very narrow corporate interest without revealing who their true paymasters are how much of legislation would you say is written by lobbyist i remember doing an

investigation into just california state legislature it was like i think sixty percent this is a couple of years ago i was just worried if you had any insight on the federal level here. or your cow for here you know for all of its flaws and as you know i my first transplants the state is very corrupt but at least you have a system of showing who sponsors bills that way and stricker meadow in washington and i just finished a reporting trip in idaho and the lobbyist actually wear name i.d. so there's a lot of problems and i know but there's certain elements of transparency in congress there are no such standards why be straight bills every day there they are sponsoring legislation but there's no system to keep tabs on that. you know your mention before of course open secrets next on the website even they aren't tracking the dark money it takes something like you and very in-depth investigation how do we follow this i mean what do we do to follow this trend here. that's

a good question oh well i just really want to project this is a self-help book that put out what happened last week i relaunch to blog republic report dot org and there are many reporters who are following the money trail trying to uncover these types of stories but i have to say it's very typical because so much of the system has been pushed into the darkness it's purposefully secret and in some cases you know for this story. i reported yesterday. you only stumble into it you know the opening anecdotes of that story of finding former congressman lobbying for the palin tear i just overheard him bragging about it on capitol hill just stumble into it sometimes yeah that's what i love out here i mean you. very natural you're there on capitol trying to figure out what's going on and you saw firsthand kind of the healings and billions of all these people you know i was speaking to jack up the other day and he said that citizens united didn't actually make it easier for

a lobbyist cause they'll all ways find a way to get around it what do you think we do think citizens united exacerbated this problem. while it's i'm i'm of two minds on them so this is united and were obvious for one thing it makes raising money for a politician easier instead of having to be on the phones. sometimes eight hours a day for some of these politicians begging people for these thirty thousand five thousand dollars checks you can just find one sponsor someone to to bring in a super pac they can dump a million dollars into your district that makes it much easier it's not a lot of counterintuitive take at the same time it makes corruption much worse because if a chemical industry lobbyist wants to pressure a senator or congressman all they have to do now is set up a front group and funnel corporate money into that front group. unlimited amounts of money and very easy to pressure a lawmaker when the corruption is that simple in the koch brothers of course

a master of the how do we stop this toxic cycle leave because of course in order to play the game you gotta have a lobby on the hill now. and you know x. talk to a lot of. campaign finance experts folks who are interested in good government and there's a consensus that we need better laws and i don't disagree with that necessarily but we also need. a divorce net so there's no political will at the department of justice and there's no resources devoted to investigating federal corruption i think that we i think citizens need to demand that type of enforcement because there are laws on the books they simply are just being they are being enforced thank you so much excellent work leaf on journalist contributor at the nation really prepared time thank you so much as. that's our show you guys thanks for watching and join me again next week without a break to start all over again. in

the future one show we go on tour in times of stun where we meet some of his sons innovators in the night secrets and we find out how the big black queens for compazine and craft. fulfilled a modern day planking but still money still takes some smocks for the album signal they cheer on alone she leaves the future of.

i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. stay where it's not story. let's get this guy like you but smear dr i instead of working for the people most issues in the mainstream media are working for each other robert is you know. they did rather well. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on

their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question more. hello and welcome to technology updates this month we left the hustle and bustle of moscow i went to top stunt which is one of the country's innovation hot spots on today's show we meet some of cousins young scientists. we find out that making plane parts is a bit like baking a cake.