hello i'm tom hartman in washington d.c. here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture the u.n. security council approved a resolution to enact a no fly zone over libya and to take all necessary measures that's code for military action to prevent moammar gadhafi launching attacks against his own people resolution was approved and nothing five countries abstaining governments of france and united states have already announced they're preparing a plan for action if you go into effect within hours if you did this rapidly developing story and as crews desperately try to water down the hot situation in

japan back here at home because sort of radiation reaching our shores or our oceanic food chain it's a use for when the players and legislation michigan that allows the governor to throw elected officials out of city hall and replace them with this problem he's has one foot out the door it is a constitutional. and the geek squad may play a part in tracking down porn but it's not an invasion of privacy to have a repairman rifle through your files will debate the issue. you need to know this japanese officials are using helicopters and military trucks armed with hoses and desperately all day to day dump seawater in a crippled nuclear reactor three at the daiichi nuclear nuclear plant reactor three

is the world's biggest worry right now since it contains tons of plutonium the deadliest element on the face of the earth the water is to keep the fuel rods in the nuclear waste in the reactor cool or from catching on fire or even exploding. those efforts so far been largely ineffective as most of the water from the helicopter dissipates in the wind before we just the reactor and trucks have to be constantly pulled back to the stream high levels of radiation officials say they're close to restoring power to reactor two but whether or not the cooling pumps that reactor is still operational even if the electricity is successfully restored which has not yet happened is another question and there are still serious concerns about cooling pools filled with nuclear waste above reactor four yesterday in a congressional hearing the chairman of the u.s. nuclear regulatory commission gregory jack so warned that he believed all the water in the reactor four's cooling world was gone meaning there was nothing to prevent fuel rods melting down and radioactive waste from escaping into the atmosphere

japanese officials could not confirm or deny if that's true because they can't reach inspectorate reactor four to inspect water levels but one thing is certain radiation is leaking from the date she planned exactly how much is still unknown and it appears as though the u.s. government is growing more and more concerned about the situation president obama said this about american citizens in japan today. even as japanese responders continue to do your roic work we know that the damage to the nuclear reactors in fukushima daiichi plant poses a substantial risk to people who are nearby that is why yesterday we called for an evacuation of american citizens who are within fifty miles of plant his decision was based upon a careful scientific evaluation and the guidelines that we would use to keep our citizens safe here in the united states or anywhere in the world. also united

nations forecast shows a plume of radiation heading across the pacific ocean as we speak apparently could hit southern california by tomorrow state department dismissed any harmful effects for the west coast today is with the chairman of the u.s. nuclear regulatory commission gregory jack so had to say. basic physics and basic science tells us that there really can't be any risk or harm to anyone here in the united states or hawaii or any of the other territory so that's something that we feel very comfortable with it's really just based on the basic facts and science that's involved here so we're in the clear for now and if the situation in japan worsens what happens then and what can the japanese do to make sure the situation doesn't worse there's still lots of questions to be answered in this fast moving a very volatile situation has shed some light for us cindy for her specialist radiation health at the nuclear hall gunter director of reactor oversight at beyond

nuclear and climate scientist dr brenda ackwards all right ok. let's let's look at some of the things that are happening in japan right now first first of all paula can you give us an update on the latest that we are we're hearing right well you know this is really good news but we're not out of the woods by a long shot restoring power to unit two there's still these other units to be concerned about we're hopeful that that would resolve in power would be restored to the whole site even then it will be a very dangerous game of nuclear pick up sticks to try to sort out a jumble of fuel damage between one two three and four while the five in six units or would you know fairly stable put the damage has been done to the first four units and we still have

a full core worth of nuclear. material out of the reactor vessel up on the roof in a pool that's been without water for about twenty four hours ago and the condition of that all that fuel pre-book particularly the fuel that's been in this containment and exposed and likely slumping oh it's well on its way to melting we'll find out but i think tomorrow is going to be a very critical day for assessing a situation if they can return cooling or not successfully in fact listening to just twenty minutes ago listening to the japan d n h k is an aging whatever it is the japan television are saying that they've connected the lines to two but they're not able to activate the cooling pump because somebody has to go outside to do it or words to that effect and it's pretty and we still don't know the condition of the vessels either i mean once you introduce cold water into really hot vessels it's a little like taking a glass out of been and then pouring water into it we have to see these live

pictures of the reactors behind us. cindy. a daughter of one of the plant workers who was staying behind wrote a log apparently today quote my father is still working at the plant they are running out of food we think conditions are really tough he says he's accepted his fate much like a death sentence based on what you know about the radiation levels do you think that these workers are on a suicide mission. what i know about the levels as of march fifteenth they had measured below the four hundred millisieverts normal background that's our normal background is to whom it was sieverts a year and that's a worldwide average so if you're getting four hundred millisieverts an hour on march fifteenth and the levels have been going up and down and up and down since then. i am not sure i can speak to his particular case but i would not want to be

in conditions like that and the other thing that worries me is that if he's saying that he's out of food i am worried that aid workers will not be able to provide him with any food because of the radiation levels because there prohibitive and it's not necessarily just a plant but it could be other places in japan too where the radiation is prohibitive enough that they are not able to get aid in which case this is not only a natural disaster but it is that the nuclear. reactors have added disaster on top of the natural disaster but what water that one of the climate was what is the way the meteorology here i saw two or three days ago on one of the network television shows there was a meteorologist and he had a map of japan and he was going well george or whoever started the great news is this is blowing offshore and i'm thinking wait

a minute offshore means towards us but also perhaps more importantly means into the ocean which is the basis of the food chain and this is an entire nation and here's the graphic this is from the u.n. apparently and this is the graph and it's the basis of a food chain for a country that is mostly people who eat rice and fish so what's the situation with this and the mere logical analysis is that the prevailing winds are as you say blowing out towards the ocean and if those winds were to carry across it would take anywhere from seven to eleven days to reach the united states ranging from anchorage down to los angeles and it's important to know that the isotopes a person who is i have studied i suppose you chemistry for many years and the biggest importance you have to do is distance and shielding to protect yourself from the more radioactive isotopes and so we would expect our iodine one thirty one and cesium one thirty seven and i don't one twenty one has

a half life of about eight days if you think about transporting air mass it really depends if it takes eight days to reach united states the concentrations would be so dispersed it would be less than half of what originally was in there in the case of either one thirty one season one thirty seven has a half life of about thirty years that lasts a lot longer and we saw around turn noble that's an isotope they're still dealing with and we see it in sediments in the ocean we use it to trace oceanography ocean . afaik it's water masses because it lasts a lot so it doesn't really since humans strontium in these longer lasting elements and if reactor three goes it's going to be a hell of a lot of plutonium up there two and a fact it's into the food chain what happens one thing that's very interesting is is that some of that some of the things that we can use outside of turn opal we know of some people who were using the the crops outside turned over to pick up

some of these isotopes and then they would harvest the crops they were very efficient at taking it out of the soil we wouldn't want to of course eat as crops so i lived in germany for the full year after chernobyl i moved while i was in fact i was there the first week of may as the cloud came over frankfurt and the city was evacuated and it rained and when our whole family moved there four weeks later for a year and we would literally walk through the grocery store with a geiger counter and the milk would set it off and you know that was the iodine and but this was in some cases months later i mean half life only means half keeps going down and the cows were apparently concentrated and stuff like crazy and it was just that the mushrooms would set it off the hazelnuts would sort of i mean it was just it was really quite remarkable they didn't like us in the because we were the only americans with a better walk around your teacher to teach you to do it anyway. i guess it's not funny actually. call it the latest attempts today to cool the reactor there they're trying to pump water on the top three of these these hoses and things. they've

clearly been trying to buy time until electricity is restored. what's the best case scenario here we've i think we've touched on the worst actually what are the what are the what are the blocks what are the odds that the best case and worst case the best case is that the fukushima daiichi plant will be buried in concrete and that will still raise issues about contamination moving into groundwater. basically forever. this is there will be an immediate zone of concern as groundwater where the you know where the ground water which direction it's going it's likely to be going into the ocean so this will continue to bleed radiation from this site like a like a radioactive wound and that will probably go on for thousands of years. the worst case of course is that power is restored and efforts to

cool the units particularly one two and three reactors and. the molten mass in the fuel pool of unit for wolf all that cooling effort will fail and the accident will continue to deteriorate into a full blown catastrophe that would be much worse than. cindy the. in the question you you also have looked into the real logical consequences of exposure. if this. there's no doubt already there's an enormous amount of radioactive cesium and and other isotopes in the water off the coast of japan and there's a lot of lot of wildlife that water moves are what you would want businesses is anybody looking at this point i mean everybody's looking at the weather map is anybody looking at the water maps is anybody looking at what this is going to do

the future. i don't know that for sure i think probably in japan they're obviously concentrating on getting the reactors as stable as they can make them at this point i think. we have to be careful because a lot of the world gets at least europe and the us import seafood from japan and my worry would be that some of the isotopes like for instance tony which may not travel very far. in the weather pattern is heavy and can sink to the ground since some of these. bottom dwellers like the oysters and some of the the sea life especially the sea life that in other sea life can i would cumulate something like plutonium which has a half life of twenty four thousand years and some change. that that would be a problem for people possibly eating at sea food i think it should probably be tested and in fact i believe that china says that it is going to test food that is

coming in and other items that may be coming in from japan that it imports that's that's good. too to any of the three of you i'm not sure how to do a woman who dresses we had reports today that people coming from tokyo through the dallas fort worth airport the chicago airport were kicking off radiation detectors they don't have any in the los angeles airport they're installing them as we speak apparently what the. does this mean we understand everything that i've been hearing in the news reports was that up until now tokyo had not had particularly going over it the winds had always been going west across these plants ever since the meltdown occurred and and radiation doesn't stick to people particles to anybody well i must concerns actually that when they measure these people for radiation exposure they're taking the outside measurements so they're taking the external measurement so that's what they're getting that does not tell us what they have gotten

internally david hilbert that is correct it does not tell us and so while you might be able to with water and i'm still debating that in my own mind but you might be able to wash off with water you may not be able to get out of your system and that's the real issue is what they've inhaled or in just those of the isotopes that could potentially cause them trouble down the line in a number of these are very bioavailable cesium the body thinks it's potassium stretchable thinks it is health you know your guests. friend paul sin city thank you very much thank you pleasure thank you. it's times like these when the world has to ask itself whether or not playing with the atom was a good idea and now finally politicians will start sort of norina all the money nuclear coal and oil lobbies are giving them and make a commitment to renewables like solar wind a juvenile. coming up michigan's governor is on the verge of signing legislation

that could and over control of cities in his state the transnational corporations if you think that's crazy wait until you see what other republican governors are doing around the country. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right. i think. even well. we never government says they're for keeping safe get ready because you are freed up.

if you are been here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

who's screwed for curse all around the country earlier this week the michigan state legislature passed a law he gives republican governor rick snyder the authority to take over cities in his states facing budget deficits kick out elected local officials the bill also allows the governor to void contracts in the city as code for union agreements it's basically the give your city away to transnational corporations or other stooges if the governor says a lot before the governor signs this bill into law there's one problem he should consider the law is apparently completely unconstitutional as the chairman of the supreme court case united state trust company versus new jersey constitution orders

states to prove that breaking contracts like like the bargaining agreements is quote necessary to serve an important public interest in and since governor snyder is at the same time proposing nearly two billion dollars in corporate tax cuts you can throw his fiscal emergency argument right out the window the truth is what snyder is doing in michigan is no different than what republican governors in a least a dozen other states are doing under the disguise of a budget crisis that's jacking up taxes on working families and cutting important services so that they can get major transitional corporations who are buffet taxes to begin with even more tax breaks. this is the definition of a kleptocracy a government that steals money out of the middle class and redistribute it to the super rich brownies and campaign contributors think progress took a walk around the country that what other republicans are doing and here's what they found really quite remarkable first of all there's

a map of the united states in florida governor rick scott has cut poor billion dollars out of the education budget teachers we don't need no spend conceded four billion that's four thousand million dollars cut four billion dollars out of medicaid were people in health care we. laid off sixty seven hundred state workers and he did it to pay for a one billion dollars tax cut in property taxes you know for people like rush limbaugh with this big on beaches and a one and a half billion dollar tax cut for corporations and the great let's just pass out some money to the billionaires and corporations and cut education and it in ohio governor john casey. in ohio has cut a million bucks from the food banks twelve million dollars from children's

hospitals now there was a time in this country when if a politician said you know i'm going to cut money from children's hospitals people would go what. you know danny thomas and st jude i mean people used to give money to say we've got to help the children's hospitals but apparently now the republicans are not apparently it's actually actually cut twelve billion dollars from the children's hospitals sixteen million dollars from adoption programs these guys you know they're all oh we've got you know we're all pro-life and all those. are going to adopt a kid out sorry we're not going to help eight in order he cut these you make these cuts in order to pay for one hundred twenty million dollars tax cut on millionaires and billionaires children it's paris hilton tax cut it's an estate tax cut and a tax cut the oil companies now you know guess who got john cases elected in fact i don't think we can accurately say that that's the case and we want to governor

chris christie for example in new jersey he cut five hundred forty million dollars medicaid five hundred forty million books from medicaid some apple billion dollars can you imagine how many poor people are no longer going to have health care no longer going to have health services why five hundred forty million bucks to pay for a two hundred million dollars tax cut for corporations the only klein talked about this new book disasters of the shock doctrine she called a disaster capitalism created disaster a two hundred billion dollars tax cut for corporations and then you can cut a half a billion dollars to medicaid and say hey we're this we got through away we got you know. health care for poor people can't have that you know iowa governor tom branstad he cut forty two million dollars from the state universities there they're probably going to be closing schools. now in my opinion people talk about

infrastructure i think probably not probably but i believe certainly the most important infrastructure we have in the united states and our roads not our highways not our police and fire not our you know by our lines i changed. the most important infrastructure we have in the united states is our intellectual capacity our kids that's our future that's the infrastructure of the future who's going to be the next steve jobs and build the next apple computer in his garage who's going to be the next bill gates who's going to be the next person who comes up with the incredible innovation who is going to be the next thomas edison well whoever it is that person better not have the misfortune of being born poor because because tom branstad or being born in iowa is not going to go to college and he did this to pay for two hundred million dollars tax cuts or operations in georgia governor nathan deal increased health insurance costs for state workers by twenty percent cuts

seventy five million dollars from state universities now again in georgia you better do it is crazy stuff cut the stuff let's cut our intellectual infrastructure let's cut our in let's make our state workers pay more for their health insurance why has he had to pay for a thirty three percent tax cut for corporations are you starting to notice a pattern here in these republican governors in maine governor paul le page he cuts money from schools and infrastructure. that we don't need to stand in schools we don't need roads he raises the retirement age for public workers even to go out there and pave roads are going to do it for sixty whatever it is now whatever used to be and he does this to pay for a two hundred million dollars tax cut for the state's wealthiest one percent and corporations. it was constant and other stuff scott walker he's the help in hearing about it is strides unions and democracy to pay for

a one hundred thirty seven million dollar tax cut for corporations and to establish one party in kansas governor sam brownback cut fifteen million votes from education why why would he do this so he could eliminate the corporate income tax rate that eliminate nothing corporations pay anything yes user court system yes you use our our you know our police protect your buildings or fire departments protect your but you don't pay the little people pay for arizona governor jan brewer massive pay massive cuts to medicaid and as a consequence of her cuts to medicaid you know doing away with for example pain for organ donation transplants to people have already died in her sleep as a direct consequence of what she did now why did she do this why did she make these massive cuts to medicaid because she had to pay for a i've hundred thirty eight million dollars in corporate income tax to five hundred

thirty a half a billion dollars she gave the corporations and finally in pennsylvania and this is this one is totally bizarre that he's actually being sued for this from governor tom corbett he has eliminated half of the state's universities literally shutting down campuses he has frozen the salaries of all the teachers and states and he's cut dental coverage for all medicaid recipients so if you're poor and you're on medicaid whether you're a little kid or whether you're an old person you got a cavity hey just take an aspirin. why is the governor of pennsylvania doing this well he's got to pay for tax cuts for corporations and he's letting out of state fracking companies pay nothing now what is an out of state fracking company fracking is where they inject basically created poisonous water down into into seems like a coal and shale and things busted all up and it produces natural gas it was it was

invented by halliburton it's promoted by halliburton and turned to cheney's time and what it's doing is it's causing people to be able to turn on their water faucets and ignite their water it's a mess this is what the republicans are up to. now . it's time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question a new poll shows americans have reached a thirty five year low in their confidence about the u.s. government system. your options are eight because the supreme court citizens united decision and our democracy over the big corporations or b because all our jobs going overseas or c. because of those lies is dying or d.d. all of the above so far seventy percent of you think it's all of the above still

a time to let us know what you think you are going to tell our conduct and cast your vote the polls be open until tomorrow morning. crazy alert lifestyles of the rich and famous dogs of tibet mastiff was just sold to a chinese called baron for ten million won roughly one and a half million dollars and it's the dog named big splash the most expensive dog in the world apparently is tibet mastiffs are becoming the new status symbol for china's super wealthy so any minute we can expect the republican party here in the states to figure out a way to give this dog named big splash the world's wealthiest dog a massive tax break. coming up people who drop off their laptops the repair shop may find themselves caught by the police when you build a used computer.