there is just too flood threat is a society. that. the . happy monday all i'm abby martin and this is a great game does that just today secretary of defense chuck hagel announce that the u.s. army will be reduced to its smallest size since before the second world war and it only took us seven years to do it now that's progress the size of the army will drop to somewhere between four hundred forty and four hundred fifty thousand by two thousand and fifteen but before we all pop the champagne bottles keep in mind that less of ground troops are needed as this country continues to outsource its military to private mercenary forces and the spending cap for new military spending in two thousand in two thousand and fifteen excuse me is still four hundred ninety six billion dollars not not even including the wars that will be paying off for

decades to come for perspective consider that the two thousand and fourteen budget provides only seventy seven billion for transportation infrastructure development and a mere seventy one billion for education so if you think that this tokenistic reduction doesn't do nearly enough to really address the out of control military budget then join me and let's break this. it's a. very hard to take a. look. i never had sex with her right there.

by now the ninety nine percent versus the one person has become a household slogan and nearly every american who pays attention to the news knows that the idea refers to the ridiculous and come a quality in this country but apparently one guy didn't get the memo. two point five million americans have worn the uniform they faced our enemies they liberated millions and in so doing showed the true compassion of a great nation. they're the one percent of america who kept the ninety nine percent safe that's right last week our beloved forty third president took a break from painting nude selfies to make a rare public appearance in order to support the plight of veterans when they come back from the battlefield yes the man who launched two decades long

a legal wars that has killed sixty eight hundred u.s. soldiers lost another fifty one thousand wounded is suddenly going on a p.r. blitz to promote his veteran's program and actually have the gall to school and up public on its treatment of respected veterans and yesterday even get teary eyed interview to martha raddatz of a.b.c. news about the soldiers suffering from his imperialist experiments. i think all of us and i'll include myself in that key play about veterans but for you mr president it has to help you cope with what happened in those wars no question yeah i am but i have a duty here are obviously get slightly emotional talking about her vest because i have an emotional i'm in there with him. wow let the delusional self righteous wallowing began i forgot bush and his conscience are the real victims here the fact that raddatz and ask one question about why so many returning soldiers find themselves in such deplorable conditions or why they went to iraq and afghanistan

in the first place demonstrates the willful short term memory of the mainstream media so what corporate news was busy area war criminals pity party what major news story was being missed or earlier this month there was another radioactive leak and i'm not even talking about fukushima last week officials confirm that the waste isolation highly plant near carlsbad new mexico experienced the highest radiation levels in the facilities history after there was a leak inside of a salt tunnel where radioactive material is stored now although plant officials are maintaining that there is no current threat there is still little known about the extent of the leak or how to reduce. radiation levels in and around the site not to mention that it took days for officials to even announce that the leak had happened in fact edward lyman a nuclear expert at the union of concerned scientists told the l.a. times that quote if there is airborne contamination and it involves plutonium they are going to need to get cam to decontaminate excuse me services it was in the

ventilation system it could have spread to other areas and it's not just nuclear waste storage sites that are vulnerable to these types of leaks in fact just last year the same organization released a report stating that over the past three years forty of the hundred four u.s. nuclear reactors sustained at least one near miss now a near miss is when an event such as a failure of a cooling system occurs that increases the chance of a core melt down by a factor of ten forcing the nuclear regulatory commission to investigate further more last april former chairman of the n.r.c. gregory yachts co told the new york times that all of america's one hundred four reactors have safety problems that cannot be fixed and must be replaced with new technology interesting only he waited until after his time as head of the n.r.c. to make this recommendation helpful stuff greg thanks but these types of reports seem to be of little concern to energy department officials as to new nuclear

reactors are set to be built for the first time and nearly thirty years just last week energy secretary ernest mani's travel to georgia to issue a multi-billion dollar loan guarantees for the construction of two reactors in the state so while obama continues to promote an all of the above approach to u.s. energy humanity will continue to suffer from the on learned lessons of technological insanity. by now it should come. it's no surprise that african-american and latino populations are the largest demographic in america's prisons but surprisingly there's an even bigger discrepancy between this country's public and private prisons while a new study exposes how this discrepancy is actually by design and shows that america's largest for private for profit excuse me prison corporations stand to

benefit from harsh sentences that target minorities earlier i was joined by the author of the study and u.c. berkeley doctoral candidate christopher patrol oh i first asked him how difficult it was to gain private prisons to fix given the fact that these companies aren't legally bound by for requests. profit corporations that manage these private facilities were scandalously unwilling to share information pertaining to racial demographics or age or health demographics of their facility so most of the information that i was able to procure came from state departments of corrections and unfortunately i couldn't go to a lot of these private companies because they're not currently private prison companies aren't subject to freedom of information act reporting standards like their public counterpart it's just another aspect of private prisons that is bad.

little transparency i want to go to ferret in states like california mississippi where of course the people of color in prison a much higher numbers but that disparity is even more severe and private prisons according to reports why. that's right so to back up just for one second very briefly many people are already well aware that sadly people of color are overrepresented on a percentage basis in public prisons relative to their state and national population share essentially this study found that on a percentage basis people of color are even more over represented in these profit for. facilities relative to similar security level facilities in various states and the reason actually has to do with health and age obviously it would be illegal discriminatory to discriminate on the basis of race when making classification selections and other placement criteria in facilities but what these

private prison companies do is write into their contract exemptions to make sure that they do not have to house the most quote unquote high cost prisoners so that tends to result in a prison population in these private facilities that is far healthier and far younger. and as a result of historical sentencing patterns essentially beginning with the so-called war on drugs that disproportionately criminalize communities of color. the chances if you are a younger prisoner fifty or under the chances are that you are a person of color if you are an older prisoner fifty or over the chances are that you would. identify as what the census bureau classifies as not hispanic white so all of these complex classifications schemes end up resulting in a prison population in states like california in states like mississippi arizona

oklahoma that is far darker if you will and far younger in these for profit facilities and can you talk about some of these specific exemptions that you came across and exactly what makes one prisoner more costly and the other. sure i can so a fantastic example is it would be arizona actually so in the state of arizona there are provisions written into these private contracts between there is own a department of corrections and c.c.a. corrections corporation of america which is the largest for profit publicly traded i want to underscore that. private prison company in the united states and the provisions are such that if you are a prisoner and you get sent to a c.c.a. . managed facility in arizona and health care costs over the course of a year exceed ten thousand dollars for a prisoner then you are actually sent back to public prisons in that state so what

does that mean it tends to artificial means that it tends to artificially increase how much prisoners cost to incarcerate in public facilities and artificially decrease the per prisoner cost in private facilities and this is very very consequential. for the reason that it tends to challenge the very basis of cost savings and efficiency claims pervade by a lot of these private prison contractors one of the private prison companies in reports g.a.o. group the company's c.e.o. george zoli is america's highest paid corrections officer can you speak to the type of lobbying that sends that company is rather like geo do to make sure that they are getting the prisoners said to their facilities yet geo and c.c.a. which are the two largest for profit publicly traded companies they actually control about close to seventy percent of the market share so of course to begin

any claim to efficiency is completely specious when you corner the market to that degree but yeah i mean i can give you a prime example so last year alone c.c.a. spent about you know one hundred thirty one hundred forty thousand dollars lining the pockets of federal candidates to make sure that legislators and the governors of these various states are amenable to contract facilities and you know it's super important to clarify what's meant by this because if you ask c.c.a. or if you asked geo or you know george zoli. about these lobbying efforts the refrain that we hear from these companies is we do not spend money trying to influence sentencing patterns we do not spend money trying to influence classification policies and well from a microscopic perspective that may be true these companies are still spending wads

of cash to make sure that their lobbyists have the ear of those with their hands on the levers of power you mentioned before that the private prisons aren't subject to foyer requests there is a bill called the private prison information act of two thousand and thirteen can you talk about what this bill is and what it could possibly do to help gains and transparency and change in the system sure are more than happy to so my colleague alex friedman at prison legal news and i for the past year or so have spearheaded a national campaign. where we've garnered support from public interest groups criminal justice reform groups civil liberties groups to strongly encourage rep sheila jackson lee in the house to reintroduce what's called the private prison information act it was introduced a couple of years ago didn't make it out of committee because a number of these corporations spent literally tens of thousands tens of millions of dollars lobbying against it if the bill gets introduced and passes this is what

it would do it's very simple it would simply require that private prison companies for whom about ninety five percent of the revenue comes from office the public taxpayers would be required to disclose the very same information no more no less than their public counterpart institutions like the state department of correction or the federal bureau of prisons is already required to do and so a good way to think about it essentially is what our coalition strike is attempting to do here is to invite these private prison companies to substantia. sheet their claims of efficacy of efficiency that they've made for the past thirty years we know what the claims are we know what the arguments are but because they they lack transparency there's very little way to get a lot of this data and you know my study was a result of a bout two years of concentrated effort in over sixty five for your requests

and again as i said to public institutions thank you so much for coming on breaking down your excellent research president the trial a ph d. candidate at u.c. berkeley. thanks so much coming up we'll talk the radical roots of d.c. statehood don't miss it. chance our forces. in the finish line of the boston marathon. that. might have been hearing. from. the suspect. over the if you. did you know the price is the only industry

specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct albus. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the quote for equal work of our government and as press difficult we've been hijacked right handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers one. i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying. rational debate and real discussion. political issues. are ready to join the movement and while there are.

no taxation without representation these are the words that helped galvanize the american revolution to gain independence from the british crown you might be surprised to learn that in two thousand and fourteen half a million people in america are still living under this archaic system of course i'm talking about the capital of the united states washington d.c. when america adopted its constitution it ceded that d.c. which was then part of the state of maryland would become a federal city governed by congress see d.c. was never intended to be a state in fact it was never intended be a place where people lived its sole purpose was for congress to convene regardless over the last two centuries of washington d.c. as burgeoned into a major metropolitan center the city of six hundred thousand residents is one of the wealthiest cities in america according to u.s. census bureau the constant construction cap in the d.c. skyline is a reminder of how much money is pumped through the city every day and although d.c.

residents pay among the top ten highest federal income tax rates in the entire country us washingtonians have zero influence on how the money is actually spent see for almost two hundred years d.c. residents didn't even have a city council and elected offices and were barred from being able to vote in presidential elections the radical shift of the sixty's helped spark the d.c. statehood movement and in one hundred sixty one the twenty third amendment was passed which granted the district three votes in the electoral college twelve years later and one hundred seventy three the d.c.u. home rule act was passed in the state in local government with the mayor and a thirteen member city council and then. it wasn't until nineteen ninety that d.c. elected its first congressional represent representatives but not to be confused with real congressmen see here in the district we have three shadow congress members meaning that they can't even vote on the house floor only in committees mostly all they can do is really voice their opinion and hope it sticks yes just

like guam and part of rico d.c. is all about taxation without representation but unlike puerto rico we are required to pay federal tax they aren't territories acquired by colonial america have even more autonomy than residents of the capital so even the smallest victories that have been achieved are continuously stunted by a congress halting real legislation to grant d.c. statehood once and for all the us is the only country in the world with the so-called representative democracy that denies citizens of its capital city voting rights look it's absurd that the city that wields the most influence in the entire world is used as nothing more than a policy playground for corporate interests and world leaders meanwhile the people that have to live and work here like me have virtually no say in how our community is run luckily the push for statehood has only grown but needs our help to become a reality and to find out how you can get involved check out d.c.

vote dot org city hood for d.c. dot org and stand up for democracy dot org d.c. is not a colony so let's stop treating it like one it's time to make washington d.c. the fifty first state. of. disillusionment with the two party system is more prominent than ever before and the more center right the democratic party becomes the less represented people feel all across the country but in seattle washington the first openly. socialist candidate in decades was recently elected at the city council her victory signal that there is room for radical change inside the political establishment which brings me to eugene puryear eugene's an organizer with the answer coalition and it's been featured on this show multiple times discussing everything from the failures of u.s. foreign policy to the president ostrow complex what eugene is speaking through to

action by running for d.c. city council on the d.c. statehood green party has a ten point program that could radically transform the district he joins me now to discuss why a voice like his is so needed in this city eugene amazing to have you on this pledge area excited about this campaign let's talk about number two point a campaign where you're pushing for minimum wage increase to fifteen dollars an hour why push for fifteen when this country can't even get on board for ten well if people can just go online to the mit living wage calculator and see exactly why for a single person there's a living wage it's about thirteen dollars for a single parent with one child it's about twenty six dollars so we can see the cost of living in d.c. which is massively skyrocketed over the past decade is extremely high so we're calling for fifteen dollars an hour is the minimum wage level so that people's work really pays that when they go to work every day they're able to lift themselves out of poverty that continually going in and working hard slaving away and then having their paycheck completely be eaten up by the high cost of living let's go on to

point number three affordable housing in the district i mean this is a huge issue talk about why you made this kind of a pentacle point this is one of the biggest issues of the district we've seen tens of thousands of houses of disappear we've got a public housing waiting list that stands at around seventy thousand dollars and most unbelievably the priorities of the city are completely out of whack for example the mayor proposed in his six year capital plan to spend four hundred million dollars on the street car which is a dubious situation at best well though housing protection trust fund which is one of the key ways the city creates more affordable housing can barely make it to one hundred million dollars per year. appropriation so this seems to be a city that values street or at least the elected politicians of value street cars over putting a roof over people's heads so we say housing is one of the most basic human rights and we think that should be at the forefront of any elected official and what would be like the first step to really address this the affordable housing crisis i think the first step would be to quickly change our priorities very quickly and not be

spending money on things like street cars and also to not be afraid to find other new ways to create public revenue for example we could have a d.c. public bank that instead of investing city funds and wall street banks would be able to bring it right back here and create affordable housing and work on other priorities which create vast pools of new money to allow us to do more i want to bring up yet another point the public takeover of. pepco area. is really i think really is crazy i mean it sounds drastic to some people about this but could you explain why this isn't such a radical idea after all it's not super radical i mean the utilities are supposed to be a public service but we see these private companies like pepco which is consistently rated one of the worst of the utilities around the country they're able to profiteer continually price gouging raise people's energy prices so high so basic things like heat light things of that nature become almost out of reach for many many people and this is typical for us we're saying that the public utility should

be completely public it should be taken over by the people run by democratic representatives and have the books be completely open so people know exactly what's going in and what's going out so that these rate increases that constantly passes that the so-called public service commission continually rubber stamps we can see that they're not actually will be able to see that they're not actually for people's the operation of but primarily for the private profits of the corporation and we don't think he should be subject to that interesting that this is already being done all across the country we just don't hear about these successes colorado other states have really taken over their utilities and i think it's a really amazing. marijuana decriminalization has been pushed in the district but you your campaign is saying let's legalize it i mean once and for all why do you feel passionately about how this would benefit the district i feel extremely passionately about it because the use of marijuana has become one of the main tools and really races policing structure of this city that is stealing away the future for a lot of our young people young black people who are really some of the hardest hit

by all of the other issues that face us here in the district i think that marijuana certainly has no more terrible effects of alcohol if we can regulate alcohol there's no reason that marijuana should in any way shape or form have any sort of inhibition towards people ability to get work to have housing and so on and so forth decriminalization doesn't go far enough in making sure that this issue is not something that is really a continuation of the failed war on drugs that does nothing nothing at all but destroy the future of young people especially poor young black people here in the city. that i think the biggest in the room is what i just talked about before you came on as the d.c. statehood issue why does it bother you that we have less autonomy than. you know what i mean exactly unbelievable that you're supposed to be a citizen of the united states you don't have any ability the people in d.c. to affect what goes on in congress and not just in terms of the world and international issues i mean we can't speak out on the n.s.a. through our representatives we can't speak out on the war in iraq at least through our representatives although we certainly do in the streets but even the issues

that deal with those right here in d.c. some congressmen from some other state could have more control over what laws do you see passes or pass other laws and impose them on the city and keep us from doing any number of things and d.c. residents have no voice it's an unbelievable amount of disenfranchisement and i think it speaks to the deep democratic deficit in the country as well as in this city it's really i think of a lot of the other injustices that go on here in washington d.c. what do you think is the biggest blockade i mean it seems like a no brainer here we are in two thousand and fourteen we still don't have a state. i mean it seems like something that could happen quickly but certainly in congress there's no appetite for it in the areas around d.c. . in particular and certainly i think we see here in washington d.c. there's not any major constituency big business other people like that they're happy to be supportive and lobby for a voting representative maybe even full voting rights because then they just have another congressperson they can buy off right but when it comes down to statehood which could really give people of d.c. more empowerment politically at a deeper democratic deficit we don't see those big forces that really control

politics in america big business that has a stranglehold on politics wanting to move on statehood in the us it's really only going to be as a people powered movement that statehood comes about absolutely what can people do to help your campaign living in d.c. and outside of d.c. and how can people find you on social media we have about forty five of course where people can go to w w w dot eugene puryear dot com check this out and everything's on there and if you're outside of d.c. you can definitely donate to us if you're inside of d.c. you can sign up we're going out all the time to work hard we're really going to need to move that shoe leather and get those people power movement to have a d.c. that is truly for the people on twitter were at eugene for the number for d.c. and facebook at exactly the same eugene for d.c. well eugene you're one of those brilliant people i've met i think that you do an incredible job and i can get more on board with what the campaign i hope people really get on board and help you out d.c. city council candidate appreciate it thank you so much. that's our show you guys. going to break the set all over again.

wealthy british style. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with max cons or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report. 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 for. it's no accident that ali built his cafe on the very edge of the desert. he knows that any adventure into the sahara will always take this road. and.

he sells water coffee and coke but trading has been slow today. but on top of that he's heard worrying news on the radio unlikely though it sounds the snow in neighboring egypt. which could threaten that as its main event a festival that attracts thousands of tourists. a mild desert winter is when business usually peaks and when the sahara really comes to life.