welcome back to the big picture i'm arbonne coming up in this half hour the crisis

in japan is hitting home in a major way the dow jones had a stump this afternoon plummeting two hundred fifty points so what's next for the global economic climate and think the u.s. is immune to nuclear disaster we pinpoint the hotspots of plants across the country warning one may be located in your backyard but first. yonder in our face risks of nuclear meltdown another devastating consequences the apocalyptic quake and tsunami in japan what are some of the other global effects of this catastrophe both the u.s. and japanese stock markets are taking the last few days over concerns that one of the wealthiest nations on the planet and a major supplier of technology around the world could suffer a nuclear meltdown so what are some of the unforeseen economic consequences of

a cripple japan here to shed light on this issue from tokyo economics writer and author of the book in the jaws of the dragon my absolute favorites ayman fingleton ayman welcome. there's a good time to most to be with you great to have you first of all you're in tokyo how is life different there since the quake well there's been a lot of take that the consumer level people are rushing to the supermarkets clearing the shelves you go there to the supermarkets anywhere. and there's nothing left bread as soon as it's begun so if the show it's amazing. how is the japanese government and the japanese media handling what's going on at the fukushima daiichi plant but it's nonstop coverage on television and. newspapers and full of. pages and pages and pages of stuff. so

certainly it's becoming you know that there's a certain order of panic here and. when i sold the emperor go on television yesterday i thought well this this is interesting. he was talking about how sorry it was a big difference in the north. in time and so it lost people but i think the subtext of that was that here i am in my palace in tokyo i'm not taking the first plane out please you know don't panic things got to be all right about this nuclear situation yeah although i was reading today and i think was the financial times that every bit the bankers literally was just the banks there's had chartered all the private planes out of out of tokyo it's just incredible anyhow you've done extensive work on both china and japan's role in the global economy how significant of an impact will this disaster have on the rest of the world's economy and why and

how. i think the impact will be considerable the thing that people don't fully understand in the west is that japan these days because of the development of technology has lots and lots of nice products where it is a monopoly supplier or an oligopoly supplier and if factories producing these things have been knocked out by the earthquake then the will be shortages that will have knock on effect right around the world small things. certain tiriel lots and lots of materials that are monopolized by japan and a very important. component subcomponents sub sub components. kenya sheens so on japan is dominant or monopoly supplier and of these things are not available just stops. the implications for korea from china. the united states also will feel is what you're talking about there for example if

i'm looking at a computer or a cell phone or a smartphone or something like that there while i may say made in china and many of the parts were manufactured in china or in south korea and it was all the really assembled in china that there may be even just one little key component that was made by this one unique factory in japan that's the only place on earth that makes it and because of the like you know the classic because of the lack of the horseshoe the battle was lost situation. absolutely and japan is a much bigger player in the mobile phones and china is china simply does the. the final assembly if you look on into the russian processors japan probably has forty of certain total added value in a mobile phone it's making the materials something like silicon silicon chips it's monopolized by japan there are two companies here that produce socially on the

world's supply. i. and that's just one material there are dozens of jewels that are crucial that ensure the earthquake is over the tsunami has gone on i've realized there are continuing aftershocks. but how long will it take before the factories come back on line i mean is it just a matter of putting stuff back on shelves or maybe reinforcing walls or is there a problem that has to do with the electricity situation right now because some of these nuclear power plants are shut down in the last day. is is making manufacturing difficult what is it there are two problems one is logistical or short term electricity gasoline oh boy. problems and then there is the larger problem which will take much longer to sort out which is damage to factories from the tsunami and from the earthquake and also

there's these exclusion zone around the fukushima plant there's. no that needs an. engine factory very close to their plant so that there will be a long term hit to metal faction supplies that will last for true three four months ago. do you think it's possible the this that this loss of these japanese components could awaken americans to the downside of globalization the things that you talk about in your book in the drawers that are agone and that we don't make anything in america anymore. absolutely i think it will come as quite a shock to people at the moment rightly everybody is concerned about the loss of life and the rescue efforts in the. two weeks and the news will be of the economic effects of all this on american soil and somebody wake up to the fact

but as you say you no longer make anything it's really an amazing story of america's last since in the last twenty years it is and he told it brilliantly in her book in the jaws of the dragon which i want to once again recommend people and that they check out your website and fingleton from tokyo thank you sir for being with us tonight my pleasure i'll explore another angle of the story in japan in tonight's daily take. who supports bullying in school republicans after a rash of teen suicides last year as a result of bullying many state and federal lawmakers are promoting legislation against teen bowling president obama has even stepped into the fray he said this about the issue at a conference on bullying prevention at the white house last week. even republican

governor chris christie took a break from his union busting to pass an anti bullying law in january but now the anti-gay wing of the republican party very prominent wing i might add is mobilizing against these laws claiming they're nothing more than insidious tools of the homosexual agenda that's probative quote the executive director of the american principles project and the law is your head in the pro between movement he said this about the anti bullying legislation. so why is it that the republican party must turn every moral issue into a political one and you conservatives really think that coming out against legislation to prevent teenage suicides will play well with the american people are takers to share her take is julie gunlock senior fellow at the conservative independent women's forum julie welcome back thanks for having me on nice to have you with us republicans are anti anti bullying legislation i don't get it but i think the further for most people it's not a matter of being anti bullying legislation and that's not the role of the

governments of the federal government to be putting a blanket over all schools saying all schools need to deal with this some schools may have a problem with bullying a nation should perhaps put together an anti pulling program but some schools might not have a problem so it should be left to the local schools and to the parents and the school boards to really make a decision whether there should be a bullying program but. suicide is the leading cause of death for children under fourteen. university just published their medical school has published a study of medicine they would have thirteen studies done in thirteen different countries and concluded that there's a direct correlation between bullying and suicide and and by the way since one thousand nine hundred fifty the rate of teenage suicide in the united states has doubled so isn't this a federal issue i mean if this is nationwide this is happening and this is taking our children the. this is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed and it

certainly is something that that schools need to look at i think the question is this each school district is different each school is different and if we're going to make schools if they get a federal unison bullying is something that it does happen it's a terrible thing i know but you know nobody in their statistics indicate in the some schools don't have ballooned overall short i think it's a degree to which there's a problem in some schools i'm sure there is a very bad polling problem but what this what this legislation would do is say each school is the same and every school needs to have so if you have a school that has no william problem and you have a federal audience but when you have no problem it's just like if you got a federal law against you know heroin and you go to school where there's no heroin there's no problem but this is going to pump a lot of money into this into these programs federal money is going to be used for this money and we still there are a lot of problems to educate kids ago but we have about it's contents and teachers and schools can do that if there is a if there is

a problem in the school district nothing prevents schools from creating these types so in other regions we should take that money and what it is to actually show billionaires we should allow we should allow local schools to make the decision whether they want a book any anti bullying program but there are local schools in west virginia mississippi louisiana and texas that have no money they have no resources they are you know to get to quote john boehner broke and and you're saying. i happen to believe the schools have a lot of money and they could take some of their resources so pay for their parents in some of these. downtown metropolitan atlanta schools and detroit schools i've worked in los angeles there are there are school districts that are they are i mean you literally got teachers bringing in paper and posed i understand that there are there are very very bad things that happen in the world there are terrible things we spend a ton of federal money on the drug problem in the u.s. there's still drugs we spend tons of my. try to look at the silent crime trying to

prevent violent crime they're still gun crime they're still violent crime they spend tons of money on the war and there's a lot of oil so i don't know what maybe we have some areas of agreement but none of those things those are all things that had to do with adults consenting adults or stupid behavior by adults we're talking about a ten year old just to you and protecting our ten year old do you think that school districts can make a decision do you think that this teachers and the school district officials in the schools care about kids yet that's why they're there but and that's why they're making a law saying that we couldn't process rape and to terminate if they need to start an anti bullying program they don't need the federal government telling them that they need to do this in their schools if they determine in their school that there's a terrible bullying problem they can stop start an anti bullying program just call up the local billionaire and say hey can you help us out a little there teachers can can teach kids against you know that bullying is is not a good thing parents can teach you how to teach are so good forty fifty kids and

some of these classrooms they don't have time to teach you know basic arithmetic they don't have to you know in a fifteen minute hour with fifty kids in a class that's one minute per child how. our teachers are overwhelmed in the united states after thirty years or reaganomics and cuts to education is one area we might also agree on is that i do think that teachers are overwhelmed and maybe a little bit scared to actually punish kids for this they're terrified of being sued or or parents being angry at them for cheaters. but i think it's fair i think that teachers are afraid to. acts a little act with a little bit of punishment towards these children you know so well i do kids get thrown out of school they get expelled to get attention they get theirs. it's certainly different than it was thirty forty years ago we've passed laws against against you know if anything in fact we have more kids and to in criminal the tension now than we used to have been in many cases those are coming out of the

school district because the teachers are calling the police like you i trust the teachers and school administrators and the people that are working hard in these districts schools will look at their schools and will determine the best option for their students and we'll determine whether they need a bullying program i think that dictating this type of program requiring this type of program and also there is even talk of having principals tech students facebook updates their twitter accounts and you know this is this is that all they really talk about but there's no say there's no proposal that really legislation that i've seen how does how is it that you're conservative colleagues are saying that somehow this is part of the on the social agenda is you know let's let's teach kids about bullying well i don't i don't know i'm not i'm not sure how they make that connection i assume it's because there is a lot of focus on homosexuals as it is where they do get bullied but you know barack obama talks about growing a black and white school getting boy yeah i understand that but i think i think

there may be some conservatives that are concerned about the homosexual agenda i think the vast majority of conservatives are concerned about this is yet another example of government overreach this is yet another example of the other guy never let on that we could give him and all our good also also conservatives are concerned how can you read the fine bowling i mean if if i chop if one child disagrees with another child is that is this disagreement considered bullying is arguing is not something you want it is legislation to put horses into the schools that help kids and teachers. i wondered i thought i thought teachers were supposed to teach kids how to argue and think critically and teachers need curriculum to do that. this is a curriculum about the way that if you teach a child to think critically as they're supposed to do in mathematics and reading and writing and all of that all the subjects that they take they can carry that over and and realize that having a simple arguments that kids will have a civil argument if they learn how to think critically and how to debate so is the

sargon has been very simple to thank you for the ride and for having. the guy at the forefront by the way of the effort any blog is the same guy who led the boycott at c pac where i did my radio show from for a couple of days last month when he realized to go proud to be a conservative group was also invited so for your one stop source of all your hateful and homophobic needs shop republican. coming up think what's happening to japan's nuclear plants can't happen to us i'll give you an interactive look at the potential disaster americans can face in tonight's daily terror. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right now.

i think. either one well. we haven't got the says they're safe get ready for freedom. hamar been here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

it's the good the bad and the very extremely ugly first the good working america as an affiliate of the f l c i o working america and the organization is compensating for any casualties wisconsin governor scott walker's war on unions by

signing up more than twenty thousand nine union people since last month to contribute money to union offers people are simply asked to fill out a form online and donate five bucks thanks to groups like working america the republicans attempt to destroy democratic fundraising may be a bit more difficult than the imagine but bad senator jim de mint listen to this little gem of insanity and jim in unleashed yesterday in a radio interview about the relationship between government and god. was an international it often enough believe it the bigger the government gets the smaller god gets as people become more dependent on government less dependent on god and you cannot have a free society that way. last time i checked god and government don't amount to zero sum game i'm guessing de mint thinks that if we can get rid of government and a massive god is going to defend our nation from enemies educate our children about

history and science make sure our food and water are safe put out house fires and take out the garbage twice or maybe we would have been better off without the green . and the very very ugly newt gingrich also appearing on a radio show yesterday gingrich touted the success of nafta and when a caller pressed him that america has lost a lot of jobs to mexico as a result of free trade gingrich came back with this winner of the response. narrative enabled us to build jobs in canada the united states and mexico in competition with china i mean our big competitors not mexico are big competitors china and india and i'd rather have jobs close to united states that have jobs overseas in places like china and india. that's been sort of a lost job is a lost job no matter where it goes you wake up i don't think it's any consolation that out of work american can actually see his job across the southern border but if that was true then maybe some unemployed americans could head up to sarah palin

support alaska and look out post and see their jobs in china too was that russia any way to say apathy toward the unemployed is very clear. if this happened here could we handle it. and then you know which way the wind blows tokyo could be the half of the radioactive cloud spewing from the current crippled fukushima daiichi nuclear plant with which is about one hundred forty kilometers north of tokyo we're talking about radiation poisoning on an unbelievable scale just at the winds change the reactors that are on the verge of meltdown in japan are known as mark ones and they were designed by general electric thirty five years ago three g.

engineers resigned in protest because they believe that the market one had critical design flaws that would leave that reactor vulnerable should a cooling system failure occur and as we're all seen today they were right and for those of you who think what's happening in japan can't happen here think again there are twenty three nuclear reactors in operation in the united states right now that use the same mark one design as the ones that are melting down in japan and one of those reactors is located right here at the peach bottom atomic power station in pennsylvania it's less than sixty miles west of philadelphia a city with a population of a million and a half people now what's importer remember is that what brought the the daiichi plant to the brink in japan was not the earthquake in the tsunami it was a power outage yeah the quake in the way of knock out the power but there are

a lot of ways the power can be knocked out besides natural disasters including snowstorms light rain just plain old human error so just because the peach bottom atomic plant isn't located on a fault line doesn't mean it's not susceptible to meltdown so what would happen at three mile island or churn album both human error in fact the only difference between what's going on right now in japan and what could happen in the united states is how our government would be able to treat those affected by the radiation . this is where it gets really important here's the thing japan has universal health care so every single man woman and child in that country that is affected by this radiation will be able to just walk right into a doctor's office and receive treatment in the united states that are fifty million people are uninsured right now that's not the case and in pennsylvania specifically what i was just pointing out where that nuclear plant is which as we've discovered is facing an increased risk of nuclear plant failure the brand new republican

governor tom corbett is making sure more and more people in his state don't have access to critical health services should the unthinkable happen since taking office in january governor corbett as redirected two hundred twenty million dollars from the state health insurance fund to as his office calls an economic development or as i call it tax cuts for millionaires and transnational corporations that money was part of a two hundred billion dollars settlement with tobacco companies who were found responsible for the high cost of health care to treat ailing smokers and was by pennsylvania law mandated to this is a quote from the law fund the health of future generations of pennsylvania it's as a result of governor corbett it's decision to move this money instead to the millionaires and billionaires forty one thousand people lost their health insurance last week and another half

a million low income people who are waiting to be covered. be able to get any insurance now and a lot of those people likely live in or around the peach bottom nuclear facility the one that has the g. mark on reactor so if it should blow those people have to deal with radiation poisoning on their own sorry buddy just take a tylenol. the good news is governor's governor corbett's actions didn't go unnoticed he and his republican cronies in the state are being sued by those who lost their health insurance the same can't be said about other republican governors who have slashed their medicaid programs with impunity like jan brewer arizona a state that also has a nuclear power plant and rick perry in texas who's threatened to drop out of the medicare program altogether throwing three and a half million people off the insurance roles texas has two nuclear power plants

and tokyo electric power company which runs the six nukes now near meltdown in japan and scheduled to build two more on texas' gulf coast with the hurricanes come you know so while it's going on in japan is unthinkable and tragic if it were to happen here it would be far worse because here for some insane reason we don't consider health care to be a basic right but republicans apparently don't give a damn about those who could fall ill near a nuclear power plant or frankly anywhere else for that matter unless they're a rich campaign donor and it's time to have a national campaign conversation not just about a new energy policy which we desperately need but about national health care maybe we should stop using the japanese model of nuclear power and start using their model of national health insurance. there is such a huge gap in this perception of healthcare as a right versus

a privilege it's really quite incredible when you think about it countries all over the you know france for example famous for their all their nuclear power plants. not so much that people talk about the fact that they're dumping nuclear waste in english channel and showing up in the arctic still they've got a bunch of nuclear power plants about seventy percent i believe of their power comes from nuclear power they also have free health care for everybody in france so france has an accident they don't have a problem if we have an accident we're screwed. i've got to do something. that's the big picture for tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website at tom harkin dot com and our team dot com this terror show is available for free podcast on i tunes also check out our youtube page at youtube dot com slash the big picture artsy and don't forget democracy begins when you get out there and get active in your it see.

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