through ordinary years for the corporate personhood debate thanks to occupy wall street back when i wrote the book on corporate personhood an equal protection more than a decade ago no one knew what the heck i was talking about when i use that phrase but now people in the streets are talking about it voters are talking about it city councils are talking about it and our members of congress are starting to talk about it and it looks like the backlash against corporate personhood is finally underway. thanks to occupy wall street never in recent memory has the call to kick corporations out of our politics been louder and yesterday there were two major developments in how we can even those call for democracy that's uncontaminated by corporate cash first a group of democratic senators introduced a new constitutional amendment to overturn the supreme court's citizens united decision the decision the money is speech and therefore corporations and rich people can spend as much money as they want meddling in our elections the senators who signed on to this amendment tom you all michael bennett tom harkin dick durbin

chuck schumer sheldon whitehouse and jeff merkley all saw what happened. in last year's elections as the result of citizens united they saw how the amount of secret outside spending skyrocketed from just sixty sixty eight million dollars in the two thousand and six midterms to over three hundred four million in the two thousand and ten midterms that's a four hundred percent increase in corporate cash influencing elections and buying politicians just ten months after the citizens united decision and as you'd expect when corporations get to hand pick their members of congress republicans win big well with occupy wall street at their back now these senators are saying enough is enough and this constitutional amendment will give power back to congress and to the states to set their own election laws so that they can keep corporations and extreme wealth in check in the political process that means they can start by

passing laws like this old wisconsin law that was on the books through most of the nineteenth century and it's basically what was the law of the land in every state of the united states for the first hundred fifty years of this nation's history it read no corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute directly or indirectly and money property free speech services of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party organization committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever or for the purpose of influencing of any guide or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person or nominate for nomination appointment or election to any political office if guilty up to five years in prison for the corporate executives and the death penalty for the corporation it gets dissolved. there's no question we need a twenty eight constitutional amendment right now to bring back laws like this and kick corporations out of our democracy but the truth is this amendment doesn't go

far enough it's not just about corporations by elections it's about corporations lobbying and buying off members of congress it's about corporations being able to escape punishment when their negligence kills people on an oil rig or their pollution gives the whole town cancer it's about corporations having an unreadable right to privacy to hide their abuses it's about corporations being able to tear down sovereign governments and economic protections to promote so-called free trade it's about corporations claiming that they're people it's alternately about what's called corporate personhood and while the amendment that i just shared with you and introduced into the senate limits corporate activity in our elections it doesn't say a thing about corporations not being people luckily last night voters in boulder colorado did say something about corporate personhood by a three to one margin voters approved question to age which calls for an amendment to the constitution to once and for all say that corporations are not people and

that only humans are entitled to protections under the constitution what happened in boulder colorado last night shows the way forward for all of us who are how do you know our lawmakers sleeping in the streets or writing books doing t.v. and radio shows on these issues to accomplish our common goal to end corporate personhood as will be done overnight some constitutional amendments took years to pass but they finally did pass once america reached a tipping point in each case be it the thirteenth amendment which abolished slavery or the nineteenth amendment which gave women the right to vote america is at one of those tipping points today just like it was when young people were being hauled off to the vietnam war without any legal right to have a say in who their politicians were. and in less than four months the twenty sixth amendment was passed giving eighteen year olds the right to vote that's all it took

to pass the twenty sixth amendment less than four months and it took less than one month for occupy wall street to go national and then go global change often happens faster than we think this nation needs a twenty eighth amendment that says that corporations are not people and money is not speech let's put it on ballots everywhere move to amend dot org since then even more amendments of it introduced in congress calling for what i just said it and to corporate personhood and an end to the idea that money will speech and with the occupy wall street movement still growing strong sooner or later we'll win our next segment first aired back in july right after a man in texas was executed for a crime he was convicted of ten years earlier the subject of it is hate and fear which has taken many different forms this year from the hate and fear surrounding the gabby giffords shooting to the hate and fear most motivating islamophobia

aggression hearings on capitol hill to the hate and fear that drove our ongoing wars in the middle east hate and fear is sadly very much with us today in america and that man who was executed back in july had a message we all needed to hear that and frankly still need to hear today and movie before. last night a man in texas was executed his name was mark strawman and he was given a lethal injection by the state of texas because he let himself get consumed with eight ten days after nine eleven straw men went on a shooting spree hell bent on killing as many muslims as he could on three separate nights he walked into dallas gas stations with a shotgun opening fire killing two muslim men and shooting another man in the face the third victim. boyan just barely survived the shooting boyan will be

partially blind for the rest of his life because of his injuries he wasn't interested in i for an eye justice why because his muslim religion preaches forgiveness all the way up until the day that strawman was executed and petitioned the state of texas to spare strawman's life launching a global petition to have a sentence commuted to life without parole. but for your monster many years ago in fact i never hated him i never hated america for what happened to be i believe you was ignorant and not capable of distinguishing between right and wrong otherwise he would have done. in my favor forgiveness is the best policy. doesn't allow for hate and killing. and strawman took notice he was struck by the compassion that was afforded to him by one of his victims and he changed his way in a message to ryse billion from jail. in the free world i was free but i was locked

in a prison inside myself because of the hate i carried in my heart it is due to rice as a message of forgiveness that i am more content now than i've ever been. and last night strawman built on the message and used his last breath to issue these last words for us all to hear hate is going on in this world and it has to stop hate causes a lifetime of pain as a result of what a group of hateful men and not what our religion did on nine eleven our nation just like stroman admitted to is often consumed with hate. we have a man running for president who's disqualified muslims from serving in his administration and argue that our nation has the right to deny muslims a place of worship. would you be comfortable appointing a muslim either in your cabinet or as a federal judge no. i would not and so you're saying any community if they want to

ban a mosque yes they have the right to do that we have a prominent member of congress who is using his powers as chairman of the homeland security committee to whip up fear in our nation and investigate american muslims for radicalism i believe it's important to have this investigation on radicalization of the most in community we've seen what happened in england we know that al qaeda is trying to recruit people over here such as they did with the subway bombing in new york where as to the attempted subway bombing times square bombing these are all people living legally in the united states we have the most popular cable news network saying that all terrorists are muslims and warning warning americans about victory mosques in new york city in tennessee and hate fueled caliphate springing up to bring shari'a law to america. not all muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are muslim if you are an eighteen to twenty eight year old muslim and then you should be strip searched and if we don't do that

there's a very high probability we're going to lose an airline building that victory mosque on what's in essence a burial site would be both disruptive and cold hearted to the families of nine eleven victims the most dangerous scenario is that radical muslims seize power and put sharia law into place same thing these are all components of the hate machine killing us all with fear and driving some of us like strawman to lash out in violence but islam is not the real threat to america our own hatred our own fear is the biggest threat to this nation as the southern poverty law center points out more than one thousand hate groups operating across america today their numbers are grown by fifty four percent since nine eleven. they are neo nazis klansman white supremacists black separatists and border vigilantes they're all over there all over the country it's the various militia it's it's. filling america

what they are not however are muslims in fact according to f.b.i. data ninety four percent of all the terrorist acts committed on u.s. soil over the past decade were not from radical muslims but instead from these very same hate groups that are popping up across america and well our news media will feast once every few years on a muslim attack that was thwarted ignore the hate crimes that are carried out every single day in america often leaving families devastated and communities in distress . as mark strawman said just before the lethal cocktail was pumped into his arm hate causes a lifetime of pain. so let's not let this story of forgiveness and frankly of enlightenment be forgotten let's end this hateful so-called war on terror and focus on reading this nation of the far more describe destructive force hate and

fear. coming up after the break the dangers of nuclear power are on full display this year and no one kept up with the story better than we did here at the big picture will revisit the crisis at focus shift and later our most watched daily take of the year share with you at the end of the show. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here in the uk.

i think the bombing is feeding on to well. whenever the government says they're going to keep you safe get ready because you give them their freedom. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear sees some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom welcomes a big picture. back

in march and earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown at the fukushima plant in japan and while this crisis received wall to wall coverage in the weeks afterward the mainstream media soon ignored it even after it became clear that the crisis was never resolved and the things were in fact getting worse but we kept up with the story and our viewers responded with a lot of feedback so our next segment tonight comes to you from august just as the

nuclear crisis of fukushima was reaching a new stage nuclear expert paul gunter joined us that night to talk about the possibility of the china syndrome a possibility that is still today a very real possibility of fukushima. even though the fukushima nuclear disaster in japan has disappeared largely from the front pages of newspapers at least here in the united states the crisis still continues and is apparently in fact worsening here's what a special witness at the diet the japanese parliament said at the end of july a new radiation measurements. actually don't lie i think my team at the radioisotopes center took it upon ourselves to measure and calculate the total amount of radioactive contamination and using all of our expertise on the subject and found the total amount of leakage to be about twenty nine point six times the amount of fuel combination caused by the nuclear bomb dropped on hiroshima i do

a bit of assuming the source material to be uranium we think the total amount of leakage is about twenty times the contamination caused by that russian a bomb there were also reports that the ground under the crippled nuclear facility is beginning to crack as the nuclear core is melting down into it and deadly radioactive steam might be now spewing from those cracks further ampara efforts to contain the crisis as one unnamed fukushima worker emailed to a friend earlier this month a lot of the cracks came up in the ground massive steam is coming up from there it's too small can't see a thing it seems like a nuclear reaction is happening underground now we are a back to back you waiting watch out for the direction of the wind. so what exactly is going on there and why the media blackout on this increasingly severe nuclear disaster here offer some answers as paul gunter director of the rac reactor oversight project nuclear paul welcome back thanks again for having us tom it's

appreciate your being here i it's a shame though that this is just continuing hundred sixty days no in fact that that clip that we just played of the guy in the diet testifying was sent to me by a dear friend of mine who is japanese and lives in tokyo he's really starting to get worried i mean this this. cracks of the planet radioactive steam coming out of the earth that sounds an awful lot like and my knowledge of this is limited to having seen the jane fonda movie but it's a lot like the china syndrome the core melting down through the earth and hitting the water table right that's that's clearly a concern with that we've had all along that we know that now that the there have been three meltdowns at the reactors at this six unit site and. the vessel has failed now what seems to be the situation is that is that this korean this melted reactor core has burned through the concrete floor of the reactor

building or buildings and it has now burned into the earth and reaching groundwater is creating steam and the readings we're seeing now suggests that it's off scale for the instrumentation that's being used by workers which is ten sieverts per hour so right now it looks like the is this ten thousand millisieverts it's one million mill room it's five hundred so five hundred is a lethal dose this is a thousand room coming out of these cracks so we're seeing. you know doses that could cause. fatalities within days just put this in context that people are saying that it's a million mill around how many milligrams is dental x. ray the us in our sea the permissible dose for the public is one hundred mil or

per year this is one mil room one million milliron per hour so these are lethal doses that are coming up out of the ground so you know they've been looking to contain this accident by building tents over the reactor units which is kind of ludicrous and of itself and shows the desperation measures that are now being employed but now it's coming up out of the ground through cracks around the facility so the the accident is now you know clearly much more seriously out of control than they're willing to admit it into the wildest and absolutely and you know we were involved in a in our c u.s. nuclear regulatory commission hearing on july twenty eighth of this year where the u.s. nuclear regulatory commission basically admitted that the fuel fragments found over one and a half miles away from the facility. did not come from explosions from the fuel

pool from those spent fuel pools up on top of the reactor buildings that we've been talking about these were fuel the cordon of the u.s. nuclear regulatory commission those fuel fragments were rejected from the reactor cores in those explosions so the cores are breached immediate that seems to be the concern right now and you know we continue to see stories about aerosolized radioactivity turning up on the west coast. i think the most recent story los angeles times absolutely headlined radioactive isotope maybe from fukushima detected it's radio absolutely and sulfur which is the right product of. chlorine from sea water being poured on to those reactors in those early days. california so good. and the problem is that as we pointed out on our very first interview with you that the first thing to be controlled in these nuclear accidents is the information and now it's one hundred sixty days after into this accident and still

worsening we still see that the information is being withheld there's an incredible lag time months before we really understand and get it just as fellow who testified before the diet said twenty to twenty nine times more radiation has been emitted from fukushima than the hiroshima bomb i mean this horrified the japanese made the japanese press this was a big deal in japan i didn't see it mentioned in a single newspaper in the united states is so is the blackout i'm here or there or in both places it's a global nuclear industry that can control the airwaves the media and you know really were really dependent upon in the media right now like your program like what's on the blogs what's coming up on you tube you know this is where news on fukushima breaks first the just just to clarify in the last

minute we have here. in china syndrome like we're apparently seeing right now in fukushima the nuclear reactor their nuclear core melts through the through the reactor vessel melts through the cement underneath it melts into the ground and if it was in say nevada it would be no big deal it would end up in the dirt someplace buried forever but if it hits a water table it explodes out isn't it true that pretty much every nuclear power plant in america or in the world for that matter is built right next to water so there's a low water table because they use it right will plant i mean isn't this like inherently insane. system it's certainly inherently dangerous and once it's out of control the consequences are an acceptable you know the big concern right now is that we don't really know because we don't have reliable information on how hot that kori i'm material that melted core is if it's hot enough it can separate out the elemental forms of water hydrogen and oxygen and that creates

an underground explosive environment paul thanks so much yeah yeah there you go while the rest of the media ignores it will keep an eye on and bring you the latest news on this global tragedy. since that interview aired the japanese prime minister said crisis is over however with new signs that the nuclear cores in those reactors are melting as we speak down into the ground water with structural problems surrounding reactor four and with new leaks spewing thousands and thousands of on of radioactive material into the pacific ocean it's clear that the problems of machine will continue and we'll continue bringing you the latest on this story and the movement to end nuclear power around the planet. a few months ago we debuted a new segment on the show called geeky science and so far it's been a big hit with our viewers tonight we look back at our most popular geeky science

segment the ultimate spy tool. this is my opportunity to share with you some of the week's most bewildering interesting or weird science news the journal science is reporting this week those super thin electronic achey the sticks to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sunstein computer gaming and even spy operations will get back to that in just a second the spy operations the microelectronics technology called an epidermal what tronic system or e.d.s. was developed by an international team of researchers in the united states china and singapore one of the creators professor john rogers of the university of illinois has said that the. eliminates the distinction between electronics and biology because his words it integrates with the skin in a way that is mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user intestate is

the patch was used instead of bulky electrodes to monitor brain heart and muscle tissue activity and users who had it down their throat operated of voice activated video game with more than ninety percent accuracy the wireless device is nearly weightless everywhere so little power it can fuel itself with miniature solar collectors or by picking up electromagnetic radiation less than fifty microns thick the device is thinner than a human hair and as soft as human skin and it can stick to the skin without any glue or sticky material in fact e.t.a.'s uses a molecular force known as the vander walls interaction created he between the patch and human skin at the molech killer level scientists have spent six years developing this technology and they believe that e.-s. might find future medical uses in patients with sleep apnea babies who need neonatal natal care and for making electronic bandages to help skin to heal from

wounds and burns. on the other hand it could also be the ultimate by tool imagine someone comes up and touches your neck and unbeknownst to you you are now carrying a device they can transmit to somebody else everything from your blood pressure or your under stress or line to the words you're speaking future versions may even have cameras in them and they wouldn't even need to touch you a few thousand of them could be blown into a crowd it wouldn't even look like a little bit at dusk and suddenly everybody is chipped everybody's monitored everybody's trackable anywhere on earth and this isn't my paranoid rant this is explicitly why the spy organizations of the countries that collaborated to develop this singapore china in the united states are so excited about it. more as the story develops. up next why are republicans obsessed with magic fairies this year i'll explain after the break and later what was our most

popular segment of the year as chosen by our viewers that answer coming up. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here. i think rock from feeding on the well. we never got the that says to keep you safe get ready because you get your freedom .

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you saw you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour works pouring in some of the biggest and most popular stories we've covered this past year no two thousand and eleven t.v. show could be complete without talking about the republican race for the white house also known as the republican race to the bottom so this next segment which first aired back in november was my response to a common republican talking point that was echoed over and over and over again of the now infamous debates it has to do with these so-called free market and how every single republican candidate thinks the.