the traffic police spokesman in tokyo referred to it to the get to the accident as a gathering of narcissists expect republicans in the house this week to introduce legislation to bail out one percenters who bang up their million dollar rides here at home they'll call it the new cars for job creators relief act. after the break as japan officially caught the china syndrome the latest on the ongoing nuclear crisis in japan. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it through to be made who can you trust no one who is in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

i'm laurie mr and.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour at earthquake and tsunami nearly nine months ago brought the nation of japan to its knees today that nation rebuilds the nuclear crisis at the crippled fukushima plant continues the latest on a weekend of bad news for the plant and there's a connection between the financial problems of the post office and financial problems within the medicare program here's a hint poison pill more on this later tonight stilly to.

the crisis in fukushima continues over the weekend the crippled japanese nuclear plant spewed even more highly radioactive water into the pacific ocean roughly forty five thousand liters in all or new a french nuclear research institute says the focus shima nuclear crisis began in march that plant has leaked more radioactive material into the ocean that has ever happened before in the history of the planet. not only that the architect of reactor three of focus shima spoke out recently criticizing tepco saying the company's explanations don't make sense any claims that more than eight months since an earthquake and tsunami triggered this crisis it's inevitable that nuclear fuel has leaked into the groundwater meaning the china syndrome is officially upon us or could be also warned that if underground water gets overheated it could trigger a hydro volcanic explosion. so what's that and what does this all mean for an updated focus shaman joined by paul gunter paul welcome back see on nuclear di

absolutely and pleased to have you with us based on what the former architect of reactor three said have we officially reached the china syndrome stage or the edge of it is focused right well these are clear warnings that the accident is still ongoing now nearly nine months into this since the earthquake and the tsunami but you know i think that the the former president of soka university he saw his this information is also corroborated by an earlier report in september where an assistant professor at the university research reactor institute said that units one and three had already had a melt through and that by his projection the korean had moved as much as. ten twelve meters into the ground already this is a korean is the grounds to make that all you white house right now it's like it's

like whole magma it's like volcanic lava but it's it's highly radioactive fuel and steel and it's just it's burning down in the even tokyo electric power company. in its computer simulation because let's be clear nobody can get into these reactors to actually see what's going on these are all simulations dead absolutely it's killer right there but the the tepco has admitted that by their latest simulation the corrie him has burned through two thirds of the floor of the reactor so it's melted it's the reactor one they say has eighty five to one hundred percent of the core melted away burned through the bottom of the reactor vessel fell to the concrete floor and now is burned through over two feet of concrete course. tepco. and they've they've always been a little conservative shall we say let's say i think it's i think it's honest to

say that tepco has credibility it's less than zero right now yeah so so. you know we had a meltdown a channel and correct me if i'm wrong on that and there was a massive white hot korea may know this melted core material that could have sunk into the earth how did they stop that chair noble and how might they be able to replicate that or might they not be able to replicate that in fukushima well the to prevent closure right you know it was you know a lot they did is they drop tremendous amounts of lead and graphite and sand and. the situation in fukushima as is different because you can airdrop all that. radioactive you know that cover because these fuel pools above the core are still filled with huge amounts of radioactivity and reactor used fuel spent fuel as it's

called so they can't really bomb this corey i'm as they did it noble. from the air so and it's largely inaccessible right now both in terms of mitigation and in terms of being able to actually assess what what what the level of the accident is nobody really knows right now for units one two three and four amazing amazing how do they you know so. and they were actually they didn't they dig a tunnel underneath turn oval as well and they did and you know basically a stop point for it filled right engine or something they can't do that i'm assuming if because the water table has to be so close what happens when the korean hits the water table well this is a big concern because you know i think that if. if we think. this is like a volcano only with magma you are a lava you're thinking about radioactive material radiate hot red hot radioactive

material melting down once it hits this groundwater source the concern is that there will be this large steam generation and then simultaneously if it's hot enough it'll make hydrogen gas are exigent becomes a very explosive and pressurized goes on like a volcano and it just blows right out that's that's what the present form of president of the sacred universities calling and that could happen any time. you know we're we're keeping our fingers crossed the but i think right now it's all pins and needles there's no we don't we don't really know in the real issue is the just unmeasurable uncertainty because nobody can get in there and see what's going on so i bought a geiger counter sitting here taking all we're talking. is there a point at time in the united states and in japan for that matter we're having

something like this and going to the supermarket before you buy food is a good idea i think that these are instruments that are going to be commonplace particularly in japan i you know i were encouraging city councils that you know to be to actually develop a sister city kind of project so that you can send geiger counters from your community to communities in japan that you know right now what we know is that fukushima daiichi has contaminated every perfect in japan with. their seafood is going to be hitting our west coast any day now and it could be in the restaurant down the street it certainly represents a concern now for the indefinite future that we have this bio accumulation by magnification of radioactivity strontium ninety cesium one thirty seven that will happen you know there are some eighty forms in japan that have been taken out of rice production because because of the rice the rice is excessively radio assamese

paul thanks so much again no no yeah no nukes absolutely and much appreciated your at the work that you're doing let's hope the world learned some lessons and doesn't ignore one of the worst ecological disasters ever time to ditch nuclear power the most expensive and the most dangerous form of energy on earth. just. puts the good the bad in the very very exterior grossly ugly the good jon huntsman huntsman declined an invitation to attend the republican debate in iowa at the end of the month hosted by newsmax and moderated by none other than the donald . i'm not going to kiss his ring and i'm not going to kiss any other part of his anatomy this is for exactly what is wrong with politics it's show business over

substance if he had any courage at all he would be running for president of the united states of america as opposed to manipulating the process from the outside this is about real issues it's not about show business the presidency of the united states of america is more important than these silly game shows and reality shows and he's right unfortunately republican voters seem to prefer the silly games hence why jon huntsman is polling in last place the bad eric cantor the house majority leader is the man behind the republicans you cut an initiative which allows americans to vote on line on what programs in the federal government they'd like to see cut on eric cantor's chopping block this week smokey the bear that's right eric cantor was to would do away was smokey the bear smokey gets funding from environmental literacy programs run out of the forest service department and cutting those programs would save a mere five million bucks a year just about one three million of our debt. cancer defends the cut on the

u.k. website writing will students benefit from some of the outdoor activities these programs broad using taxpayer dollars to generate issue oriented advocacy among schoolchildren and college students is inappropriate. next up republicans will probably target mcgruff the crime dog and a very. very ugly sheriff joe arpaio when it comes to illegal immigration sheriff joe is tough as nails but when it comes to child molestation he is as soft as a snog the a.p. is reporting that over a three year period sheriff joe's office failed to adequately investigate more than four hundred sex crimes including some victims as young as two years old many of them quote illegal immigrants according to a detective within the city of el mirage when our files office was notified of these crimes quote there were no follow up reports no collection of additional forensic evidence and zero effort made after the crime report of the crime reporter

the crime was taken they put their feet on the desk and that was that so it looks like america's sheriff has some explaining to do and that's very very. coming up the financial woes of the united states postal service can be tricky traced all the way back to two thousand and six inside the daily take i'll tell you what happened that year and why the republican party is hell bent on destroying one of the legacies of ben franklin. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of to be made who can you trust no one who is in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more.

pepper spray such as burns your eyes right bright i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. much stronger than anything you could buy a lot of the loses thousands of times i'm stronger than any one of the harbor you were putting on.

your take my take is the segment of the show when we answer your questions comments criticisms and opinions here on the big picture our first comments a night is from the viewer rant line and it's a question about what's called corporate personhood when new what having a corporation not considered individuals in a longer might do to lawsuits that are brought against corporations i thought that there was something regarding the fact that they are persons allows individuals to sue for redress if there is injury due to their company instead of going after the c.e.o. so how would that affect lawsuits against companies for egregious problems that they caused in the environment and to human beings from their products or practices

. well in short form the end of corporate personhood wouldn't affect that at all here's why since the seventh century in the six hundred s. when british common law was first codified there have always been two types of persons natural persons are human beings like you and me artificial persons our governments churches and what over the years as evolved into the modern corporation both have a form of personhood so both can pay taxes own land and be parties to lawsuit no that would change but for fifteen hundred years everybody understood that there were different rules for natural persons and artificial persons the constitution for example starts out with the words we the people a clear reference to natural not artificial persons and a pretty much stood exclusively for natural persons human beings until the late eighteenth hundreds in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight after the civil war the thirteenth fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were passed to strip slavery out

of the cannon constitution and ban it forever and of course they were about natural persons freeing the former slaves that for persons the thirteenth amendment explicitly bans the ownership of people banned slavery the fourteenth amendment says that everybody including former slaves is entitled to equal protection under the law and the fifteenth amendment says that everybody can vote regardless of their race but the language of the fourteenth amendment says person without the word natural before it here's how it reads all persons born or naturalized in the united states and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the united states and of the state wherein they reside. no state shall make or enforce any law which will of bridge the privileges or immunities of citizens the united states nor shall any state deprive any person of life liberty or property without due

process of the law nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws sounds like it's talking about people right starts out with born and naturalized corporations can't be either but in a tax case an eighteen eighty six santa clara county versus other pacific railroad the railroad argued that it didn't have to pay its taxes to santa clara county because it paid a lower tax rate in santa ana county and a tax at it at two different rates in two different counties was a violation of its civil rights as a person and its rights to equal protection under the law under the fourteenth amendment when the core pointed out that it was an artificial person and thus not protected by the fourteenth amendment the railroad argued that the word person in the fourteenth amendment was not qualified wasn't preceded by the word natural and so therefore the word person the fourteenth amendment applied to both artificial and natural persons now frankly this was absurd on its face dolphin dulness the

attorney for santa clara county argued before the supreme court that the assertion that railroads are the same kind of person as that protected by the fourteenth amendment was frankly stupid he said i presume the most ardent advocate of course of great quality of protection would hardly contend the corporations must a joy the right of testamentary disposition that's to write a will or of contracting matrimony getting married and he was right and he won the case the court did not decide that the railroads are persons like you and me. but two years later when the chief justice lay dying and delfin delmas had gone back to california the clerk of the court the guy by the name of john chandler bancroft davis wrote a commentary on the case called a headnote which has no legal standing at all which said that corporations are persons under the fourteenth amendment it was exactly the opposite of the court's ruling and a decade later the quote that the court whoa did that had note and it's been quoted

over and over again by the supreme court right up to last year and citizens united so the notion that corporations are natural persons like human beings is based on a lie davis by the way the clerk of the court was corrupt and a former railroad president himself surprise but the court has ruled based on his lie over thirty times in the hundred thirty years since then and john roberts the current chief justice makes it clear they have no intention of going back to eight hundred eighty six so we need a constitutional amendment that will in effect put the word natural before the word person in the fourteenth amendment that will say explicitly that corporations are not people and that money is not speech. corporations will still be artificial persons able own type taxes and pay property to sue and be sued by you for example but they will no longer be protected by the first amendment the fourth amendment

the fifth amendment the fourteenth amendments to the constitution's protections that they all claim right now so they'll no longer be able if we pull this off they'll no longer be able to hijack our democracy and buy off our politicians tuesday december sixth for example the los angeles city council is voting on a resolution to urge their congressional delegation to support a constitutional amendment that says corporations are not people and money is not speech for more information go to move to amend dot org that's it for your take my take tonight if you'd like your comments and questions heard on this segment the big picture listen up we want to know your to send us your comments by visiting the tom harkin facebook page via twitter that underscore apartment or in the champ room on the message boards or the blog at tom hartman dot com you can also leave a message on our rant line at two o two five three six fifty three zero six agree disagree sound on it's all welcome but remember that your comments may be used on the air.

if you need a doctor don't see republicans because they're in the business of prescribing poison pills and one of those poison pills is to claim the life of the united states postal service and its half a million unionized workers we learned over the weekend that for the first time in forty years the post office is getting rid of first class the next day mail delivery so much for trying to return those netflix as soon as possible or sending the birthday card before it's too late now it'll take two days to send first class mail and that's just the first step. the post office also plans to move forward with closing half of all the mail processing facilities around the nation and closing nearly four thousand local mail facilities laying off as many as one

hundred thousand postal workers why are they doing things well if you were to listen to how the corporate media and how our lawmakers explain it is because the post office is going bankrupt and it can't compete anymore in today's digital age but that's not true the real reason why the post office is going down the tubes is because of poison pill legislation passed five years ago by republican congress and signed by president bush it was called the postal accountability and enhancement act and required the post office to prefund its retirees health benefit plan for the next seventy five years in essence to make sure that health benefits are paid for for future mail carriers who to day have now even yet been born no other company or government agency has to do anything remotely like this the republicans forced the post office to do that and suddenly the post office had to

divert five point five billion dollars of its revenue every year to the u.s. treasury to prefund these benefits and when you saw five and a half billion dollars. you end up in a lot of financial trouble consider that in the first three years after the poison pill was passed the post office immediately began losing money in two thousand and seven a loss five point one billion in two thousand and eight a loss two point eight billion and two thousand and nine it was three point eight billion but if you subtract the five and a half billion dollars poison pill requirement to prefund health benefits the post office would have been profitable each of those three years not only that recent audit shows the post office is owed more than fifty billion dollars by the us treasury after decades of overpaying its employees retirement from. getting that money back and dropping the requirement to prefund health benefits would immediately fix all the post offices problems and ensure the survivability of an

institution created by ben franklin more than two hundred years ago the republicans in congress are doing nothing to help the letting the poison take hold that's because of the post office fails and transnational corporations like fed ex and u.p.s. will profit big time not only that republicans can get rid of all those pesky unionized workers at the post office too so really it's not just about the complete privatization of mail delivery to america but also an extension of the war on unions when when for right wingers but that's not the only poison pill passed by bush and the republican congress is taking effect today so too was the medicare prescription drug improvement modernization act in two thousand and three which created medicare part d. which today is wreaking havoc on the medicare program as a whole that poison pill was jammed through congress by republican congressman billy tauzin who right after the passage took a two million dollars a year job with big pharma as main lobbying group why did bill big pharma like tauzin and his poison pills so much because the pill prevents the federal

government from negotiating for lower prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry have means drug drug companies can jack up the price of their medication for medicare recipients and the government can't do a damn thing about it except foot the bill for the overpriced medication it was essentially a massive giveaway to drug companies for which talent was well rewarded and a poison pill for the long term fiscal stability of the medicare program the bill came with a price tag of nearly four hundred billion dollars and not one republican demanded that it be paid for it would just go right on to medicare's balance sheet the medicare chief actuary at the time a guy named richard foster knew that the poison pill law was far more expensive than four hundred billion dollars he knew it was more than five hundred billion dollars even but he was. told by medicare boss tom scully to keep the real price of it under wraps if he wanted to keep his job in the bush administration after the bill passed tom scully also went on to be

a big time lobbyist with big pharma was one of the most corrupt deals to come out of congress since warren harding was president but the media completely ignored it and now almost a decade later with medicare having to pay more far more for pretty for prescription drugs than the pentagon or kaiser permanente for example republicans are yelling and screaming the program is going bankrupt and needs to be privatized it was the crown jewel prolly in paul ryan's budget plan this year replace medicare with a voucher program so the point so the point is don't believe the hype don't believe the pun and sue say government programs can't work in the proof is that the post office is going bankrupt and medicare is drowning in red ink the truth is they're both examples of government programs that work brillant brilliantly for over two hundred thirty years and fifty years respectively for sabotaged by republican poison pills in the last decade luckily there are two and of those for the post post office and the ridiculous obligation to prefund health benefits to the tune of

five and a half billion bucks a year and for medicare. medicare part d. and replace it with medicare part d. medicare for everyone democrats have introduced proposals to do both of both the house and senate but without political pressure from us they'll go nowhere so call congress and tell them to get to work healing the vital services of our government rather than poisoning them. that's the big picture for tonight for more information the stories we covered visit our website to tom harkin dot com free speech or get our t. dot com also check out of two you tube channels there are going to thom hartmann dot com shows also available for free video podcast on i tunes and we have a free tell her i phone an i pad app at the app store you can send us feedback on twitter and underscore hartmann on facebook at tom underscore our our blogs message boards and telephone comment on tom hartman dark and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there and get active tag your it occupies something.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule today.