captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: middle class families saw their wealth plummet nearly 40% over a three- year period. good evening. i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. on the newshour tonight, we sesshe rsons for a precipitous decline brought about by the nation's economic recession. >> woodruff: then, from colorado, tom bearden has the latest on the wildfires still out of control and now blamed for one death. >> ifill: and we turn to a fire of a different sort, attorney

general eric holder's grilling before a senate committee over his leadership of the justice department. >> woodruff: from our "food for nine billion" series, we have a report about japan's moves to revamp the way it feeds its people. >> japan as farmers are getting old and their children and grandchildren are leaving the farms for higher-paying jobs in the cities. japan's government has responded with a proposal to completely overhaul the way the country gets its food. >> ifill: margaret warner looks at the rally in moscow, which drew tens of thousands of protesters, in spite of a promised kremlin crackdown. >> woodruff: and jeffrey brown previews tonight's n.b.a. finals game opener pitting the miami heat against the oklahoma city thunder. that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> growingp in arctic norway, everybody took fish oil to stay healthy. when i moved to the united states almost 30 years ago, i could not find an omega-3 fish oil that worked for me.

i became inspired to bring a new definition of fish oil quality to the world. today, nordic naturals is working to fulfill our mission of bringing omega-3s to everyone, because we believe omega-3s are essential to life. >> andy the bill and melinda gates undaon. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy, productive life. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: e financial crisis and recession led to a major

decline in the household wealth of most americans, setting many back to levels not seen since the early nineties. the federal reserve household survey shows the median net worth of a u.s. household dropped by nearly 40%, from $126,000 in 2007 to $77,000 in 2010. the main culprit: the collapse of the housing market. but income dropped as well, from a median net worth of $49,600 in 2007 to $45,800 in 2010. the survey shows the recession was wide as well as deep. we look more closely at all this with paul taylor of the pew research center. and rob shapiro, chair of sonecon, an economic advisory firm. he's a former undersecretary of commerce. rob, let's talk about the who. who was the most a ffected by this kind of loss of wealth? it's kind of a stunning number. >> the middle class. you know, high-income people have a much larger share of

their net worth in financial assets. now the stock market fell 50%, t th stock market has come back. low-income people don't own their own homes. this was real he'll concentrated in the middle class whose main financial asset... whose main asset is not financial but the equity they have in their homes. >> ifill: but if you are poor, even if you didn't own your own home, you also took a hit. how did that work? >> everybody took a hit. this latest report is a reminder of just what a deep mess the ameran public is is . it's three years ago allegedly that this recession ended. for most americans it doesn't feel like it's over. this is a reminder. 40, of... 40% of net wealth gone. median household income which is as good a description of standard of living, a good a single number as we have. that's not just down over the last four or five years. that's actually down over the last 10 or 11 years.

that starts to get to the basic tenet of the american dream, which is the next generation always does better than the one before. we've now had more than a decade where median household income has not returned to an earlier peak. never seen this since the great depression. everything, everybody has taken a big bite. rob is right. it's hurt the most in the middle... it's hurt people of color more than whites. it's hurt young more than old. to the extent that anyone was a little bit sheltered, older folks were somewhat sheltered. those who were retired didn't have jobs to lose. many of them purchased their houses at pre-bubble prices and already paid off their houses. they're not quite as exposedded as the people who bought at bubble-inflated price s when the market collapsed. >> ifill: people's incomes were depressed during this period as well not just their equity. >> well, you have to think of this as kind of a perfect storm of negative economic events. first, you have a housing bust.

second, you have a financial crisis which is based on that bust. and that financial crisis then creates a deep recession. what we're seeing in housing prices is not simply the unwinding of the bubble. the bubble unwound some time ago. itoesn't take bubbles that long to unwind. what we're seeing now is the impact of the deep recession created by the financial crisis on people's ability to maintain their homes, still very high, abnormally high levels of home foreclosure, three, four times normal levels which continue to drive down housing prices and wherever they occur consequently reducing everybody's wealth. >> ifill: let me try for a silver lining which is credit card debt is down and interest rates stayed low. isn't there some sort of residual effect of that? >> yeah, i mean there was something called the reverse

wealth effect. when the housing market was inflating, as it did in the '90s and 2000, people lookedded around and said, boy i'm rich. they took out second mortgages. they borrowed against what turned out to be the inflate values of their homes to increase their lifestyle. they got themselves into an exposed situation. then if somebody loses a job or has a medical emergency suddenly the house of cards comes tumbling down. certainly one silver lining has be theirs been great sobering effect. yes, people are taking out less consumer debt. on the other hand, there's been a rising share of people with student loan debt which for the first time in about a year has surpassed credit card dealt. you have this albatross that particularly hits hard at young adults had who are just trying to start out, just trying to find that first job. we know the unemployment rates are particularly high among young adults. many of them are sattalled the $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 worth of student loan debts. >> there is a very sharp contrast in this report. that is both housing and

financial assets both fell very sharply. financial assets by 2010 had recovered half of their losses. today they've recovered virtually all of their losses. we spent $1.2 trillion directly stabilizing the financial markets and another $2 trillion indirectly through the fed stabilizing those markets. it worked. and the people whose incomes, whose network and incomes depend on financial assets, which is people in the top 10% and in particular the top couple percent, they're back. we spent witter yeam knock to stabilize the housing market. those values continue to go down. so we have increased inequality significantly through this event. >> ifill: these numbers are not current. they're about 18 months oal and overlap two administrations. there's not necessarily a political finger to be pointed but there is certainly a ripple effect you can expect still from these numbers that we see.

>> yeah, housing really... these numbers are as of 2010. they're 18 months old. using has not come off the floor. there was a little bit of increase in the first quarter of this year but then it seemed to be back down again. so again we have not seen... this has been the slowest recovery on almost any measure that you choose, whether it's income, whether it's wealth, whether it's housing. again, in the modern era. i think it's setting the stage for the political conversation we're about to have. we have a public at the pew research center takes a lot of surveys of consumer sentiment and feelings about the economy. people are feeling it. i think they're living it. >> well, the fact is that our failure to stabilize housing prices has extended the slowness of this expansion. the fact is when people feel that they're getting poorer month by month, when their net worth is going down, which means their debt is not changing but the value of their assets is

falling, they hold back on spending. that's what we've seen among consumers. when consumers hold back, businesses don't... >> ifill: people felt they were getting rich. they didn't hold back on spending. that kind of dug us into this hole. didn't it? >> well, it created the expansion that preceded this. no, it really didn't dig us into this hole. this is... you can't say that the hole was created by overspending. the problem here, the deep recession was created by the reckless behavior of large financial institutions and the unwillingness of the government to regulate them which created the financial meltdown. >> ifill: briefly, paul, what is the quickest way out of the hole? >> well, i'm not smart enough to that know that but i do know that the american public, it's very hard to drive the optimism out of the american public. even if this these kinds of times we are an optimistic people. we take these surveys all the

time. we're beginning to see some doubts creep in. i would say whether your own financial future will be okay and the financial future of the country will be okay. most people still think yes but there are some doubts. >> paul taylor of the pew center and robert shir thank you both very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: still to come on the newshour, the fires raging in the west; the attorney general faces a grilling; japan's shrinking farms; the massive protests in russia; and the heat versus the thunder. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: wall street rebounded today, on hopes for a new economic stimulus. stocks reacted to the president of the federal reserve bank in chicago. he said he backed new fed action to stimulate job growth. the dow jones industrial average gained 162 points to close at 12,573. the nasdaq rose 33 points to close at 2843. a star witness testified today in the sex abuse trial of former penn state assistant football

coach jerry sandusky. mike mcqueary is himself a former penn state assistant coach. he told of witnessing sandusky molest a boy in 2001. for more, we turn to joel achenbach of the "washington post," who's covering the trial in bellfont, pennsylvania. you heard powerful testimony today from some important players in the case. >> yeah, it was a very intense day. yesterday was the same way. i mean we heard a lot of ry powerful testimony. first from an 18-year-old just graduated from high school four or five years ago. he testified that he was sexually abused by jerry sandusky in sandusky's basement. the witness saw on the stand yesterday the witness had been very composed and sort of matter of fact. it was a much older person who was describing something that had happened many years ago. this was a much younger witness. it was overcome many times he buried his face in his has as heecounted this. it was very intense morning.

and then this afternoon mike mcquery, the former penn state assistant football coach testified about what he saw one night when he walked into the locker room. he saw sandusky he believes sodomizing a boy in the shower. i'll add one thing. underlying all this is this issue of people not coming forward, not doing more, not following up. there was one witness at the end of the day, a wrestling coach, joe miller, w sd, you know, he saw this strange thing with sandusky on the floor on the mat with this boy face to face and he kind of wondered about it. but he thought, no, it's jerry sandusky. he's a saint. he's done so much for these kids. >> why is mcquery so pivotal to the case? >> he sat there on the stand, looked at jerry sandusky and said i have no doubt what i saw, you know, i'm sure about it.

it was a very powerful moment. he lookedded right at sandusky and said this. you know, this is someone who is, you know, a coach at penn state. you know, he's not... there's no obvious reason why he would make up this story about walking in and seeing this in the shower and surprising sandusky. i think he was a very strong witness although the defense did try to highlight some inconsistencies with previous accounts by mcquery. >> many thanks. thank you. >> sreenivasan: voters in half a dozen states cast ballots today. the day's main focus was a special eltion in tucson, arizona. it will decide who succeeds former democratic congresswoman gabrielle giffords. she resigned in january to focus on her recovery after being seriously wounded in a mass shooting last year. a sense of alarm grew today in a syrian city where hundreds of civilians are feared trapped. government guns fired for an eighth day on haffa. u.n. and u.s. officials have warned that a new massacre may be in the works there. rebels said they were evacuating

haffa, and angry crowds blocked u.n. observers from entering the city. meanwhile, in a washington speech, secretary of state hillary clinton accused russia of supplying helicopter gunships to attack syrian cities. ey have from time to time said that we shouldn't worry, everything they're shipping is unrelated to their actions internally. that's patently untrue. we are concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from russia to syria. which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically. >> sreenivasan: at the pentagon, officials said there is no plan to block russian weapons shipments to syria because there is no arms embargo in place. in afghanistan, president hamid karzai declared there will be no more nato air strikes on any afghan homes. he said he had reached that agreement with coalition forces. it followed last week's nato air

strike that killed 18 civilians celebrating a wedding. the victims included women and children. in kabul, karzai said that kind of attack would never be tolerated in the u.s. >> even when they're under attack, they cannot use an airplane to bomb afghan homes. even when they are under attack. and i had an argument wh him. i said do you do this in the united states? there's police action everyday in the united states and various... they don't call on an airplane to bomb the place. >> sreenivasan: nato officials had a different interpretation of what was agreed to. general john allen, commanding all u.s. and nato forces in afghanistan, said the coalition agreed to limit air strikes on civilian dwellings. but he also added a caveat. >> it doesn't obviate our inherent right to self-defense. we will always use our requirements for self-defense and do whatever we have to, to protect the force. but what we've learned is that we have inflicted civilian casualties by the employment of some of that aviation. so what we've agreed is that we

will use all other means necessary. >> sreenivasan: allen has apologized in person to families of the victims of last week's air strike. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to gwen. >> ifill: fire crews in colorado and in new mexico reported more progress today in their efforts to contain blazes out west, but hundreds have been driven from their homes. newshour correspondent tom bearden has our update from fort collins, colorado. >> overnight the fire that's been burning through northern colorado since saturday spread again. it now covers 68 square miles, more than 43,000 acres. in some areas this morning, trees were lost in a shroud of thick smoke over the mountainous terrain near fort collins. but the u.s. forest service added more tanker planes to help fight the flames after the congressional delegation demanded more aid and fire managers said they had begun to see progress toward containment. >> it was a sunset. we thought we were around 5%. my hope for today estimate would

be we should be around 10%. weather dependent and all those conditions changing that will affect that. sometimes we make almost no progress. because the conditions. and other days we make a lot of progress. >> reporter: the fire has destroyed 100 homes and other buildings. it's also claimed at least one life, 62-year-old linda steadman. her family released a statement saying she died in the cabin she loved. for those who have fled the fire there is a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety. >> terrifying to not know whether we're going to have a house one minute or if we're going to end up being homeless. we worry about all of our neighbors who lost their homes. it almost doesn't seem fair we haven't been up there that long and our house got saved. people who have lived their whole life and some built their own houses their houses got destroyed. >> reporter: the fire began with a lightning strike. reed armstrong with the u.s. forest service said once it got started heavy winds took over.

>> conditions have been very dry. what was the major factor was wind. we had winds wi gusts over 40 miles an hour over the weekend. that's what really caused this fire to spread so fast. >> reporter: similar conditions contributed to a 56-square-mile fire in new mexico where about 36 buildings have burned. that blaze was about 30% contained today. but an even bigger wild fire in southwestern new mexico has been burning since mid may in a less populated region. it's now the largest fire in the state's history. in a bid to help the state forestry unit in neighboring arizona dispatched two water tenders and 15 fire trucks to new mexico today. all told at least 18 large wild fires are burning in nine western states with hundreds of firefighters deployed against them. >> woodruff: on capitol hill today, one of the president's

cabinet members faced hostile reception from one side of the political aisle. another hearing and another tough reception from republicans for attorney general eric holder. this time it involved sensitive national security leaks about cyber attacks against iran's nuclear facilities. and secret drone strikes at militants in yemen and elsewhere. holder defended his appointment of two federal prosecutors: ron machin and rod rosenstein to investigate the leaks. >> we have people who have shown independence and ability to be thorough and who have the guts to ask tough questions. and the charge that i've given them is to follow the leads wherever they are. whether it is... whever it is in the executive branch or some other component of government. >> woodruff: but republicans on the senate judiciary committee demanded an independent special counsel. south carolina senator lindsey

graham. >> it creates suspicions where they shouldate not be. all i'm asking for is for you to find a lawyer in this country that all of us could say virtually all of us could say, that is the right person to do this job rather than you picking two people and telling us about how great they are. >> woodruff: there were also new blasts over operation fast and furious. some 2,000 guns initially disappeared in the botched federal sting involving gun smuggling from arizona to mexico. today it sparked a fiery exchange between holder and texas senator john cornyn. >> you won't tell the truth about what you know and when you knew it on fast and furious. you won't cooperate with the legitimate congressional investigation. so, mr. attorney general, it's more with sorrow than regret than anger that i would say that you leave me no alternative but to join those that call upon you to resign your office. >> this is now the ninth time that i have answerd questions before a congressional committee

about fast and furious. if you want to talk about fast and furious, i'm the attorney general that put an end to the misguided tactics that were used in fast and furious. which leads me to believe that the desire here is not for an accommodation but for a political point making. that is is the kind of thing that, you know, you and your side i guess have the ability to do, if that's what you want to do. it is the thing that i think turns people off about washington. while we are very serious problems we're still involved in this political gamesmanship. >> woodruff: so far holder has had president obama's backing, including this last october. >> i think i've been very clear that i have complete confidence in attorney general holder, in how he handles his office. >> woodruff: still republicans insist holder has withheld documents on fast and furious and the house oversight

committee is considering citing him for contempt. the justice department says it has released 7600 pages of material. holder insisted today that he's trying to cooperate. >> as i said i want to avoid this constitutional crisis. i will not, however, compromise the integrity, ongoing prosecutions or put at risk witnesses or people who we are working with. >> woodruff: the house committee votes on the contempt citation next week. for more on how republicans have targeted holder, we turn to carrie johnson, who covers the justice department for npr. and daniel klaidman. he is a "newsweek" and "daily beast" special correspondent and the author of "kill or capture: the war on terror and the soul of the obama presidency." we thank you both for being with us. >> thank you. woodruff: do you first. why were republicans today again coming down so hard on the attorney general? >> well, almost from eric

holder's nomination and even before his confirmation in 2009, leading senate republicans had insisted they were going to target eric holder as vulnerable to political attack. that pattern has continued up until today, although i'd say today what had been a simmer turned into a boil in many regards. >> woodruff: what was the main take-away? we showed some of these exchanges that were contentious, tough. >> contentious, indeed. senator jon corn in, the republican from texas called for holder to resign. holder said he was not planning to do that. the attack today by the republicans seemed to have two fronts. one is an old controversy, fast and furious that botched gun sting operation along the southwest border. and then the new element, the second element is how the justice department is handling these leak investigations. very sensitive information was allegedly leaked by members of the administration. republicans on capitol hill want the justice department to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate that.

>> woodruff: republicans not satisfied with the fact that he thinks that these u.s. attorneys will be sufficiently independent. >> they are skeptical. people, including senator john mccain, a republican from arizona, have pointed out that one of the u.s. attorneys doing the investigating had been a political donor to president obama even though the other appointee happened during the bush administration and is a republican. >> woodruff: daniel, is there a central thread running through all of this? as ms. jones has just said there has been criticism of the attorney general going back to almost day one of this administration. >> carrie is right about that. it really did start at the very beginning. you know, i think if there is one central thread, it is that this attorney general perhaps more thaany her members of the obama cabinet is associated with some of the more progressive policies of the obama administration. and so he's become a lightning rod for conservatives. it begins with his involvement in counterterrorism policies.

you know, contentious, hot-button issues, closing down guantanamo bay. his decision to investigate bush era torture and then the decision to try khalid sheik mohammed in federal court in manhattan which was extremely controversial. beyond that, attorney general are ways at the center of very divisive social issues. in the case of holder it's gay marriage, it's immigration, and it's civil rights issues. all of these issues have made him a kind of a vulnerable target in some ways for partisan attack. >> woodruff: staying with you. should we just consider this more of the same, that attorneys general always face this kind of scrutiny that they get swept up in some of the more, the bigger controversies of every administration? or has this reached a different level? >> well, if it's reached a different level it's only because i think washington has reached a higher level of recrimination and political

partisanship. i've covered attorneys general going back 20 years. you know, as far as i remember there's never been a case where particularly in an election year, in the last year of a president's term, the opposition party has not gone after the attorney general. attorneys general occupy very sensitive position in the government. it's sort of the intersection of law and politics and investigations. and they typically come under a partisan attack. in holder's case, there's maybe one other factor. early on, he did make some political stumbles that i think reinforced this idea that he was a liberal. he gave a speech on race in which he used the phrase "the nation of cowards." he talked about gun-control issues which were a controversial issue. the irony, i'd say, is that holder actually is a fairly mainstream democrat. it's not a kind of unreconstructed liberal. this ia guy who spt most of

his career as a federal prosecutor and then as a judge where he had a reputation as a very tough sentencer. they called him hold 'em holder. >> woodruff: how is the justice department dealt with all this over the past three or so years? and how has the attorney general himself dealt with it? >> i think that's changed over time, too, judy. at first this administration seemed to not pay much attention to attacks especially on the fast and furious operation. they told members of congress a year-and-a-half ago there was really nothing to see. and then as they investigated further they realized maybe there were some mistakes and they needed to get to the bottom of who made them. but because their response initially to congress was move along there's really nothing going on, they've had to spend some time cleaning up that position. >> woodruff: as of right now the white house sticking with him. >> very much so. as late as yesterday the white house spokesman jay carney said holder had the full support of the president. in fact, the president and the

first lady and the obama... and the holder family are relatively close personal frids. they see each other. holder has a strong position in the inner circle in that regard. >> woodruff: we know the republicans in the house looking at a contempt citation. is there a sense of where this is going to go over the months to come? >> it's hard to know. it seems like and i think carrie i'm sure is covering this, it seems like the justice department anyway and eric holder is doing whatever he can to try to head this off. it would be not a good thing, i think, from the perspective of people in the justice dertment th hold... if holder were cited in contempt or if, on the other hand, he had to turn over deliberative documents, you know, to deal with this problem because, you know, you really don't want the congress meddling, for example, in investigations. that's something that i think has been talked about here.

so i think the hope this will be headed off. it's only happened very rarely that attorney general has been held in contempt. holder called this a constituonal crisis. thatay be going a little bit far but i think it's serious business. >> woodruff: just finally. no indication he's going to step down. >> none at all. i checked in with the white house and justice department officials this arch. they say they don't expect to see him going anywhere. >> woodruff: thank you both. thank you. >> ifill: next, to japan, where a rapidly aging population is forcing the country to rethink its agricultural system. our story is part of the "food for nine billion" series, a multimedia project that explores the challenges of feeding a growing world in a time of social and environmental change. it's a "newshour" partnership with the center for investigative reporting, homelands productions and

americ public media's "marketplace." the correspondent for tonight's installment is sam eaton. reporter: in modern japan, farming is is still very much a holdover from simpler times. much of the work is is done by hand on small plots of land that have bnultivated by the same families, sometimes for centuries. but today japannese agriculture is at a crossroads. japan's farmers like 71-year-old and his wife are getting old. and their children and grandchildren are leaving the farms for higher-paying jobs in the cities. >> my eldest son is self-employed. my younger won is working in america. they don't really need to take over the family farm but the bottom line is that if they don't continue on, this household and farm will beover. >> reporter: many industrialized countries are losing farmers to old age. but the problem is especially

serious here in japan where less than 12% of the land is suitable for farming and every acre counts. japan's government has responded with a proposal to completely overhaul the way the country gets its food. it wants to increase farm sizes 30-fold over the next five years to make them competitive on the global market. it's considering a sweeping new free trade agreement that would expose the country's rice farmers to unprecedented international competition. all of which has ignited a passionate public debate over globalization, national identity and food self-sufficiency. for this 49-year-old organic farmer and restaurant owner, producing food isn't just about economic efficiency. he says in japan, it has a deeper, even spiritual meaning. >> when we see a scene where the rice plants are growing in a paddy we feel serenity. we have these ideas in our culture. i'm worried that these things may be lost. what's important is not just

that the produce is cheap and good quality. but by farming we are actually connecting humans to the landscapes. farming cannot just be a simple capitalistic business practice. >> reporter: but farming is also about feeding people. that's not so easy in a mountainous densely packed country of 127 million. a visit to tokyo's jiebility wholesale fish and vegetable market gives a sense of the scale of the challenge. japan already imports 60% of the food it consumes. after the toll taken by last year's earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, that number is growing. the trade agreement that the government is promoting would mainly boost the nation's struggling manufacturing base but there's a trade-off. it would also eliminate sky high import tariffs on foreign rice, a move that would force japan's small farmers to compete directly with industrial mega farms in the u.s. and australia.

>> we're working on a smaller scale here. i think that's the way it is now. if ts small country japan is put up against those big international growers, i think it will be a tough situation. >> reporter: the ministry of agriculture estimates that japannese rice production would drop 90% if the trade deal goes through but in a country where rice farmers like the moris have long depended on subsidies to stay afloat, this exist says he understands why the government favors an open market. >> with free trade if we are talking economics and there is no reason to do agriculture in a place like japan, the obvious answer is that japan should just import its food from countries that are efficient producers. >> reporter: he says there's more at stake than just economics. he says outsourcing food production can be a dangerous gamble. >> the reason why we still think that it's important for japan to

have a strong agriculture industry is that if and when there is ever a global emergency or trade agreements change, we will still be able to feed ourselves. also agriculture is very key in building community and maintaining culture as well as protecting the environment. >> reporter: farmers are finding success with alternative business models that embrace those values while turning a profit. he now runs his own restaurant and sells the produce from his farm directly to high-end buyers. he says there's a demand for healthy high-quality products. and that for him staying small is good for business. he says there's a lesson there for the country as a whole. >>o matter how big you try to make a farm it's not like japan's agriculture will ever compete with other countries' large-scale industrial farms so it just doesn't make any sense. >> reporter: as japan's

countryside empties out there are signs of a growing countermovement. 33-year-old divides his time between urban tokyo and his family pig farm. >> when i was a student i thought i would be anything but a farmer. i wanted to start a cool business and live in the hills in tokyo and have a ferrari. that was my dream. >> reporter: then he saw what was happening to older farmers like his father and had an idea of how he could help. he farmed a... he formed a network of young farmers and launched a video marketing campaign to appeal to japannese youth. >> once i looked at it a different way, thinking if we can integrate the entire supply chain into one business model from food production all the way to the customers' table, the image young ople ha of farming would change. even though farming is a

traditional industry, it can also be a cool, meaningful and even profitable business. >> reporter: he pioneered an e-commerce site called my farmer where customers can purchase farmers' harvest online. it emphasizes a connection between the seller and the buyer. a connection that this man hopes will draw more young people to farming. >> our mission is to persuade children of farmers working in the center of tokyo to quit their jobs and return to the farm families and begin farming. that is the shortest and fastest way to reform agriculture in japan i think. >> reporter: passing farmland on to the next generation is a dream shared by 64-year-old. with small farmers aging out and the government thinking big, he represents a sort of middle ground that some people say is a better way forward. he grows wheat, rice and buckwheat in the scenic mountain valley, about a three-hour drive west of tokyo. he says 30 years ago when he first started farming he was

drawn to the romanticism of small scale organic agriculture. >> that was going to be my life path. in reality it was extremely difficult. i was only able to continue organic farming for two years. it was unmanageable. the weeds and the insects were overwhelming. unfortunately i wasn't able to make a living with that. >> reporter: instead of getting a second job like most of japan's small farmers, he decided to scale up. he rented 800 separate fields from 300 different families. about 250 acres in all. eventually he added a flour mill and hired eight employees including two of his sons. he still received government subsidies but his farm has been successful enough that he's confident his sons will carry on the business. he points to japan's unique terrain. small patches of farmlands, tucked between mountains. a supporting model like his.

>> even if we could make larger fields we would still need to cultivate the smaller patches and areas in between. >> reporter: hcompares the job of feeding the nation to constructing a traditional japannese building. >> what makes the buildings strong are the small stones that go in between the large ones to hold them in place. this is true for agriculture in japan. just look at the land we have. the large-scale farms are here but we need the smaller farms to keep us strong. >> reporter: he says that foundation isn't just important for japannese agriculture. it's what makes japan japan. >> ifill: you can find a blog post >> ifill: find a blog post by producer cassandra herman about rekindling interest in farming among young people worldwide. that's on the food for 9 billion web site, as are the earlier stories. find a link on our site.

>> woodruff: in russia, tens of thousands marched in the capital city despite the government's efforts to stifle the protest movement. margaret warner has our story. . >> warner: the crowds in moscow braved a drenching rain today to demonstrate their discontent with newly installed president vlade miles an hour putin. protest leaders put the crowd at 120,000. the police counted 20,000. the authorities granted approval for the demonstration, but last week putin signed a new law imposing heavy fines on anyone causing damage during a rally. and on monday police raided the homes of key opposition figures and called in some for questioning. protestors today remain defiant. >> these latest events, police searches, arrests, prosecutions based on... all of this will only stir up society and those who think about the future. people are tired of putin.

people want him to step down. >> warner: large scale protests began last december after putin's united russia party won parliamentary elections marred by fraud. they continued as putin, then prime minister, pursued his return to the russian presidency in march. in an interview with the newshour durg the campaign, opposition leader alexei predicted a protracted struggle with putin even after the election. >> 100,000 people in the streets of moscow. of course he can try to foil the process by force. >> warner: are you prepared to lead those protests as far as they need to go? >> absolutely. warner: putin won the march election with 63% of the vote. without widespread allegations of fraud. but last month the day before he was inaugurated, police and protestors battled again in moscow. today's rally was peaceful but

some protestors said there might be worse to come. for more on this, and where the putin-protestor standoff is headed, we turn to adrian karatnycky, a senior fellow at the atlantic council and former president of freedom house, which assists democratic movements in russia and eastern europe. and edward lozansky, founder and president of russia house, a consulting firm based in washington. welcome to you both. mr. ratnycky, benninwith you. what sort of a challenge do these protestors pose to putin as he begins his six-year, next six-year term as president? >> the first thing is that these are very massive by russian standards protests. russia had a fairly quiet period in the first two terms that putin was in office and really he has not confronted this level of dissatisfaction. the second challenge is that it's occurring in the capital. putin well knows that wherever there have been substantial changesandolical

liberalizations in the region, they have been fought out in the capital cities so it seems to me that he is nervous about this new phenomenon especially at a time when oil prices are lower than the ones that sustained huge budget surpluses. russia faces a period where over time it will be whistling down its, you know, its hard currency assets and facing tougher economic decisions. >> warner: do you think he has reason to be nervous about these? >> i don't think so because still he enjoys high popularity. his rating is still pretty high. he is the most popular politician in russia. people who protest have the right to do that but it's a pretty mixed crow. if you look at the picture you'll see a lot of russian, soviet flags, communist flags, nazis. >> warner: as well as the young... >> right they have a perfect right to do it. actually some of the protests

are peaceful. the police didn't interfere. putin really said... >> warner: medvedev who was president and became prime minister. >> needed only 500 people. with all the problems that we see, it's still a free country. >> warner: i don't know if you want to respond to that point and also... >> i think the... i do want to problem because i agree with ed that putin remains a popular politician and he is living off of this huge surplus that, hh gas and oil prices have created in the russian public. but more importantly i think putin is now... faces the first political challenge of his time. of his time in office. equally importantly the russian media. russian television where 90% of

russians get most of their news is really almost completely a parody of a free and open society. civil society is active. there's space for political protest. sometimes suppressed, sometimes not. but the most important thing is that t media a highly manipulated. the big challenge to putin is from the internet media. these are the two new phenomena. the discontent of the urban capital and large city middle classes and the sort of internet savvy youth culture that is now massing in these larger protests. >> warner: do you think they're the seeds of difficulties for him in the growing internet use in russia? i noticed today, for example, hackers suddenly disabled the website of this tv which is a private tv statn tha h been running protests even daily or live on their website. >> he's doing that. i already mentioned this.

it's easy for him to run the country. in the last 12 years. still russia enjoys pretty good economic condition right now. actually as a matter of fact better than the united states. if you look at the g.d.p. debt in the united states it's 110%. in russia only 10%. i mean g.d.p. ratio to the economy. unemployment in russia only 5.8%. he's doing pretty well. i think he will serve his term. what's important is they really want to make a change and an impact. yothey have to unite. i told you there's a pretty mixed crowd. many people who i think want to be associated (inaudible) all those big numbers. not because so many of those pro western what they call lean to the west democrat. majority, i don't know, i can't say the numbers. a lot of them you can see from the ags are not the ppleou want to deal with. >> warner: mr. karatnycky, what do these protestors want now?

i can understand all the protests before or in between the election, but realistically what are they asking for and is it realistic at all? >> fundamentally, they have trying to deny putin his legitimacy. they are calling for for new parliamentary elections. they're calling for him to step down because they consider him to be illegitimate. there is a question about whether or not he has a mandate. i think ed was absolutely right that putin still remains, has high degrees of popularity. but the real issue for putin is that putin is showing that he is taking this movement very seriously. the legislative changes, imposing high fines for protests, the harassment of some of the leaders of a fairly disparate movement is helping in a sense to structure the opposition. he is creating heroes in the opposition by harassing the people like nevalny and

people..and the liberals and others who are rounded up, a very disparate group of the five leaders. in a sense by taking sharper measures against the opposition, he is giving the opposition confidence that it is on the right track. that it is a serious force that he needs to reckon with. in a sense that's the boomerang. that's the unintended consequence of his tougher policies against protests. >> warner: back to ed. one, do you agree that ironically this helped sort of raise the profile of these protestors? but two, what alternative does putin have? >> i think he has more permission. i think of many things. sometimes he has to yield. >> warner: as a practical matter, what do you mean he has to yield? do you think he really does need to do something to open up the

political space somehow? it used to be to form a party you needed 50,000 people. of course it's very difcult to get 50,000 united on the same idea. now it's only 500 people. let them have at least one party which can clearly say what they want. so far we can see only get rid of putin. let's say they succeeded. the next morning what would happen? disaster, chaos? and the majority of russian people still know from history 1917 when intellectuals and pro western democracy folks, they got lep inand bol she havics for 70 years. >> warner: we're going to have to leave it there. thank you both. >> ifill: finally tonight, a heavily anticipated, david-and- goliath showdown for the nba championship. jeffrey brown has a preview.

>> brown: they're two of the nba's most exciting teams with perhaps the two greatest players today. miami heat with lebron james and the oklahoma city thunder with kevin dur ant. they're a study in contrasts. veteran versus youth, established super stars versus rising stars. for the heat it's all about the big three. s james, the league's most valuable player, and forward chris bosh arrived in 2010 as high-priced free agents. joining veteran guard duane wade. oklahoma city counters with a core of talented young players, including scoring champ durant and point guard russell westbrook assembled through the nba draft. for the league itself a lot is riding on a high-profile final after a season shortenedded and then almost canceled following a long labor dispute between owners and players.

>> brown: kevin craft covers the nba and other sports as a writer for the atlantic. he joins me now. kevin, we're probably both sports fans here but beyond the realm of sports it's always interesting in the culture how some people rouse everybody, right? loved and hate. lebron james is one of them. >> that's true. i think since his decision to move from cleveland to miami two years ago and the y in whh he did it by announcing his decision to sign with the heat on national television, on espn as part of the decision, that really sort of put him in the public's conscious in a way he had never been before. whether fairly or unfairly he's been perceived as a bill-in for deserting his hometown team, the cleveland cavaliers and joining the heat. >> brown: people are rooting against him certainly last year. >> absolutely. he will have a lot of people rooting against him. not just the fans from cleveland. there's a lot of casual sports fans who think this is somehow who has too much ego. he thinks too much of himself. he think it's the championship for the taking even though he

hasn't earned it yet. >> brown: these finals are partly about him. now as we said in our set-up, you have this fascinating match-up of teams of contrast. a young oklahoma team. >> absolutely. oklahoma city, they moved from seattle. they were previously the seattle supersonics. now they're in oklahoma city and have a rabid fan base. they love the thunder in oklahoma city. they have three young stars that are exciting. they play an up-tempo style basketball with a lot of offee. they're sort of giving nba fans sort of an underdog team to cheer for because coming into the season a lot of people assumed the heat would be the favorite. it's an up for grabs final. no one would be surprised if the thunder ended up winning. >> brown: basketball is a team sport but it famously when they have these one-on-one rivalries. it can sort of supersede everything. most famously perhaps larry bird and magic johnson. credited with kind of, you know, giving the boost to the league. do you see the potential here? lebron james and kevin durant?

>> i do because they're both unique talents. they bring a lot of special skills to the game. they play like guards even though they're very tall. i think that will really entice casual sports fans to at least tune in and stay abreast of what's going on in this series. they're both sort of larger than life figures. i think it should make for compelling drama both on the sports aspect and the human aspect as well. >> brown: you have oklahoma city and miami. when lebron said i'm taking my talents to south beach, right, the nd of am, and then you have oklahoma city which, as you said just got behind this one team. >> absolutely. i think miami is perceived as a very brash and confident team. oklahoma city it's the complete opposite. they're perceived as a very humble team, as a group of individuals who are really striving for excellence at a young age. as somewhat of an underdog coming into the series although they did have a better record in the regular season.

>> brown: let me ask you briefly about we mentionedded the labor strike that started this season. how has the league been impacted? and how much rides on a finals like this rt of creating the, or bringing the old excitement back? >> i think it was impacted from a standpoint that since the season had to be fit in a compressed time slot, there were a lot of back-to-back games. players were very tired. the quality of play during the regular season went down a little bit. as you saw players just not having enough time to recover. game to game. but i haven't got evan the impression that it's really affected fans' perception of the game. there's so many good, young, talented players in the league right now that fans are very excited to watch this. very excited to sort of forget about the labor strike and see what the outcome of the finals was going to be. >> brown: kevin craft, thanks a lot. >> thank you for having me. woodruff: again, the major developments of the day. wall street rebounded on hopes

for a new stimulus by the fed. the dow industrials gained more than 160 points. and a key witness testified that he saw former penn state assistant football coach jerry sandusky molest a boy in 200 o on our web site, we examine the language of the presidential campaign. hari sreenivasan has the details. >> sreenivasan: in this week's political checklist, political editor christina bellantoni talks with judy and gwen about how president obama's remarks on the economy last week are still fodder on the campaign trail. that's on our politics page. plus, on paul solman's making sense page, you can see an up- to-the-minute estimate of the student loan burden in the u.s., now topping a trillion dollars. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. judy? >> woodruff: and that's the newshour for tonight. on wednesday, we'll look at j.p. morgan executive jamie dimon's testimony before a congressional committee about his bank's big trading losses. i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. we'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. thank you, and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:

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