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May 14 – The Glaring Need to Invest in Transportation Infrastructure; The House Ends the NSA’s Bulk Collection of Data on Americans; Assuaging the Nervous Saudi and Gulf Monarchs

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Part 1

 

We begin with the the fallout from the Amtrack derailment in Philadelphia which could have been prevented by a speed-control system known as  PTC, Positive Train Control, and speak with Robert Puentes, a Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program and Director of the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative. He joins us to discuss the lack of any overall national plan to link rail, air and road networks and the desperate need for investment in transportation infrastructure at a time of record low interest rates when money is cheap to borrow.     

 

Part 2

Then we examine the fate of the USA Freedom Act in the Senate after an overwhelming vote in the House of 338 to 88 to end the NSA’s bulk collection of data on American citizens. We speak with a 37 year veteran with the National Security Agency, William Binney, who rose to the rank of Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis and Reporting Group at the NSA, and we will discuss how the data that has been collected so far is not just metadata but personal content that violates the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution.

 

Part 3
 
Then finally, as the U.S. and the P5+1 move closer to ending Iran’s isolation with the nuclear deal, we look into the assurances against potential missile, maritime and cyber attacks from Iran that President Obama offered to nervous Saudi Arabian and Gulf State monarchs and princes gathered at Camp David.  Iranian/American historian Maziar Behrooz, a Professor of History at San Francisco State University joins us to discuss what the Wahabbis and the Sunni monarchs.find most unsettling, the revival of the underdogs in the region, the Shia.
 

 

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