welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour massive wildfires devastating tornadoes and flooding rains are becoming all too common in the american weather forecasts are we seeing the impacts of global warming warming what scientists have been warning us about for years also a nuclear reactor is back up and running in japan for the first time since the fukushima disaster this is the right move for a country that still trying to recover from the one of the worst nuclear disasters in history and while america is hooked on high tech voting machines some countries have had enough isn't it time we said no to the privatization of voting and started ensuring accuracy and reliability in our elections. millions of people are still without power around the nation's capital and left to deal with a record breaking heat wave without air conditioning fueled by all time temperature

highs on friday a massive freak storm ripped across the mid atlantic friday night killing at least seventeen people and knocking out power to more than three million west virginia maryland virginia ohio and washington d.c. of all declared states of emergency meanwhile on the other side of the nation as a wildfire continues to scorch colorado where tens of thousands of people have been evacuated out of harm's way and more than three hundred fifty homes destroyed firefighters claim they now have fifty five percent of the fire contained at waldo canyon colorado on the hills of this freak weather is a new report from climate scientists around the world warning that when it comes to rising sea levels the tipping point has already been passed scientists with the u.s. research group climate central warn that even with drastic cuts in c o two emissions rising sea levels cannot be stopped over the next few hundred years threatening roughly a tenth of the world's population who live in low lying areas so here we have massive wildfires catastrophic storms and rising oceans climate scientists have

been warning us for decades about the effects of climate change are now starting to see their warning come true jamie henn joins me now is the co-founder and communications director at three fifty dot org jamie welcome. thank you much so is this the new normal and if so what's it going to look like well it's really not the new normal but it may be the new strange we see terror is that it's all across the united states from the ones you mentioned to record heat wave sweeping much of the country i was just looking at the weather and it hit one hundred eighteen degrees today in kansas that is unprecedented we set two thousand new all time high temperature records just the last week after march will be senator. temperature records so we're seeing the impacts of climate change play out all across this country and i think that is beginning to shift attitudes here us i was talking with a friend over the weekend who lives in scotland. in the press there when there's

there's all this freaky stuff going on the trees are dropping their leaves too early hold them too late the bugs are hatching at the wrong time for the birds eye is just it's so obvious and it's heavily reported whenever it's reported or whether anomalies you know one hundred mile an hour winds and things they reported as an effect of global climate change and she said when when people who are you know who come along and say oh no no no this is just you know whether extreme is just normal or it has nothing to do a c o two they get trashed in the media whereas here in the united states i'm watching news reports of these kind of events followed by ads that basic you know a for b.p. and for clean coal and no discussion of global climate change at all do you think that the american media is not discussing these issues because of all those ads. we're at a place of a role i think there's a large conspiracy of silence and media right now and you can see it from you know not only fox news but across some of our most so supposedly respected newspapers you know just the other day that washington post ran two stories on its front page

one about the keystone x.l. pipeline of the tar sands of canada and another about the three storms that you mentioned there is no connection you know the tar sand here is that when the largest pools are the plan at the obama administration and harvard ministration canot are really trying to charge ahead with developing that was at the same time we see the effects of climate change play out and yet when you look at any of these stories are running in parallel instead of being connected now thankfully it's happening here and there i think to the end has are getting so it's all. weather is getting so strange that the media can't help but the forests to begin to connect those dots you know your broadcast or here and there your weatherman here or there it's beginning to make those connections and i think seeing that the public is hungry for the media to play that role to scientists to explain what's happening but yeah that hasn't happened yet at all and it's one of the places where i think the public needs to stand up and demand that type of coverage and demand that level of seriousness from our media their public officials to talk about what's happening

it at the very least begin to start asking the right questions jamie in the minute we have left what happened what came out of rio look at the climate change conference not enough you know rio was one of the larger. in a generation and introduce very little and it was another place where we see the city as a fact of the fossil fuel industry and all the money that they're spending this was supposed to be a summit where we came up with new sustainable development goals instead we got an agreement that wasn't even worth the paper it's written up thankfully though a clear demand did come out of rio from the public which is just growing a movement to call for an end to fossil fuel subsidies the billions of dollars going hand over to the industry overly as it's anger over this public spending grows and as people become more aware climate change because of the impacts that we've mentioned that movement will continue to grow but as you said you know it's really up to the media to begin to do a better job covering these stories also jamie and thanks a lot for being with us. thanks a lot welcome to the new normal for extortion was wild fires and floods all brought

to us by climate change the nine trans national oil and coal barons and the politicians they own. down the best of the rest of the news for the first time since before last year's march earthquake and tsunami a nuclear reactor in japan is up and running again despite two hundred thousand protesters gathering last week in central tokyo to demonstrate against turning any nuclear reactors back on reactor number one or number three excuse me at the oil nuclear plant in the fukui preferred prefecture in western japan was officially flipped on sunday night restarting japan's embrace of nuclear power many other forty nine reactors that have been shut down since last year is scheduled to be turned on again later this month but scientists are warning that the plant still haven't been properly upgraded to withstand strong earthquake and tsunami like the

one that took out the fukushima plant which is still in the midst of a nuclear crisis last week a record levels of radiation were discovered inside reactor wanted that plant a lethal dose of more than ten thousand millisieverts an hour it was registered in the reactor that's ten times more radiation than a reactor is to it three of the operators of the plant tepco workers are unable to enter the site due to the high levels of radiation so is it really wise project pan to be restarting its nuclear plants all the country is still trying to resolve the world's worst what may well be the world's worst nuclear disaster here to offer his take on this is paul gunter director of the reactor oversight project and beyond nuclear paul welcome he thinks thank you first of all is this yet the world's worst nuclear disaster absolutely this is a. it's a disaster that is still unfolding first of all we're still concerned fukushima unifor even tokyo electric power company now is admitted that two of the walls are

bulging out. underneath this elevated fuel storage pond with one hundred thirty five metric tons of nuclear waste so we're still in a print progress of an accident that could yet unfold into even a larger catastrophe well we just saw this radiation spike at fukushima reactor one what does that mean again we have the inside these reactors the radiation levels right now are even frying robots that are trying to get in there so it's a lot of guesswork a lot of calculation but in fact what we have is a accident that's still out of control at this site in a number of units and have in your opinion has japan and for that matter the opinion of the majority japanese people in japan actually taken the necessary steps to prepare these these forty nine reactors that they're bringing back on line over

the next month absolutely no in fact what is now coming out is the. fact that kansai electric power company has been. repressing the fact that the unit that's just come on line has an earthquake fault underneath it so the disclosures are showing that you can't trust the government and nuclear power and in fact i think that what we're seeing right now is evidence that there is a cultural shift in japan that is not going to return to business as usual i think you're right what's the situation with regard to the fukushima radiation that's showing up in the united states. you know we've known all along that particles have been in the atmosphere from the accident and they continue to pursue potato i think the problem is that we don't really have enough information and we our government

is not providing us with adequate monitoring for not only rain or what's in the food but you know we're going to see a series of independent studies that are going to give us a better indications of what is the actually the fallout situation in the united states or groups around america that are independently academic studies that we're monitoring right now that we believe will be giving us a good idea of things like radiation levels and mushrooms which are biological cumulate of radiation and all along the west coast we're going to be we're going to be seeing the news and we'll certainly be looking for sharing that with you i remember i lived in germany the year after chernobyl meltdown that we moved there the month with all the data and it was the mushrooms that you could walk through a supermarket with a geiger counter and they were going to those early indicators because they do say yeah yeah well. the anything in particular well actually i want to go back to

reactor number four at fukushima you said this is just to reset this conversation this is a what ten story building roughly. yes that has in the roof of it all this nuclear waste yeah and the building is now say a forty foot deep pool six degrees up in the in the reactor building above and outside primary containment it contains about one hundred thirty five metric tons of nuclear waste and just last week it lost cooling to the pool which you know luckily it was restored but what we're seeing again is this very iffy sketchy patchwork of safety systems that are prone to failure and there's no goes it could be these things are not seismically rated and we're in we're quite concerned that any sizeable earthquake could just set this whole accident. fire again this is become like a house of cards just waiting for nuclear power always has been

a house of cards very very well so far thanks so much against freezer fukushima's. thank you. we need to learn from our mistakes not repeat them we need to end nuclear power the most dangerous and most expensive form of energy on our planet no nukes. after the break ireland is fed up with voting machines it's selling them first scrap metal all the time america followed suit went back to doing things the old fashion and by the way reliable way. there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before source material is what helps keep journalism honest we.

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first comments and i comes from jan in iowa who post on our thom hartmann dot com message boards and had this question on one of the real issues for america should all this silly talk about libertarian philosophy is only distracting from a discussion of the real issues for america how are we going to get the economy moving and people back to work where are the jobs what is the do nothing congress going to get off their rears and produce a jobs program well chan you have to understand is that the calculus that the republicans are following is that or it's not even that sophisticated it's more like simple addition subtraction simple arithmetic that they're following is that

if they can make people miserable. and the more miserable they can make people the more likely it is people will say you know i don't like the guy he's the president because he's seemingly responsible for everything let's get somebody else and they'll vote for mitt romney instead of bronco bomb and so you're not going to see any jobs bills coming out of this congress because the republicans control the house of representatives and they have and they can filibuster anything in the senate so they're just going to do everything they can to make things worse the next coming of the night comes from peer angelo who posted on the tom hartman facebook page he had this response to last thursday's daily take where i question the supreme court's power of judicial review sorry but the constitution expressly makes the supreme court the final arbiter of constitution ality section two article one the judicial power shall extend to all cases in law on equity arising under this constitution seems pretty clear of it however if the problem is despotic judges then congress should impose regulations on the justices as prescribed by the

constitution not remove a power that's expressly vested onto them. well first of all it article three section one says that the that the big the supreme court should be the final court under the constitution it does not say that they have the right to determine what the constitution says and in fact in the first fifty years of the existence of the supreme court or really the first forty years they only did that twice they only chose to rule on constitutionality twice and in one thousand and three in the twenty's so really it's the people themselves as thomas jefferson said as i quoted in that last rant jefferson said you know the congress should decide what's constitutional for congress president should decide it's constitutional for the president supreme court can decide what's constitutional for the supreme court but ultimately it should be up to the people themselves through their vote to cars are final comment the night comes from stephen in edinburg scotland had these words of wisdom i mean edinburg in scotland i try and catch up with the big picture when i

can i have read almost all of tom's books in the last hours of ancient sunlight would be great reading for all secondary school children as it's a consciousness raiser and that is the most important thing we can do right now raise conservationist change consciousness after all we are on the same team humanity has not much time now to get it right on this planet and i think you know that life will still go on with or without humanity but the key lies in creating a new cultural story for our children and in a generation this could change everything i agreed and that's why i wrote the last hours of ancient sunlight we have to get it that it's our culture you know it's our culture stupid we have to understand that we are part of everything we've had this cultural story for about seven thousand years that were separate from everything that we can put ourselves in boxes and cities and and do whatever you want the environment around us we can't it's all one thing and we're part of it. just.

it's the good the bad of the very very in a cyclone or gordon asli ugly the good the d.c. republican republican republican committee the committee has included a call for l g b t quit the quality in its official party platform the platform reads we the republicans of the district of columbia support the belief that all individuals without regard to sexual orientation on title to full and equal protection under the laws and the constitution and that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect the statement is in stark contrast to other states republican party platforms like in texas the platform argues that quote homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit hopefully the d.c. republicans can convince some of their other party members to jump on board and support equal rights for all. the bad shell oil last week the obama administration

gave the green light to oil companies like shell to start oil drilling in the arctic but if a company causes an oil spill they have no idea what to do about it when asked about the possibility of an oil spill in the arctic shell so that their plan would be to end counter there were ninety five percent of the oil in open water before it could wash ashore but they have no plan on how to actually collect and control the oil spill once they encounter it in fact a spokesman for shell oil said we never make claims about the percent we could actually recover because conditions vary of course if you think shell would have come up with methods to prevent or at least control oil spills especially since the gulf disaster what they clearly have. and the very very ugly mike mel's own since the supreme court's ruling on obama. macare last thursday conservatives across the nation if they weighed in on that decision. that includes mike mills own

founder of the merrimac tea party merrimack new hampshire own posted his take on the decision on facebook thursday saying i hope the five supremes get colon cancer chris is referring specifically to the five justices who upheld the law mr bell's own could have simply said he disagreed with the decision but instead he chose to wish a terrible disease in the justices who made it this is the type of rhetoric that is all too common in politics today and it's very very. ireland decided this week to scrap their voting machines like the one stored here and. they're selling them for scrap metal because they found that they were too unreliable and too easy to hack they'd only use them once back in two thousand two

thousand unfortunately america hasn't learned as quickly as the irish used to be in america that exit polls are the gold standard in term and if there were shenanigans in an election for over a century we use them and we got very very good at it they almost never deviated by more than a few tenths of a percentage from the actual electoral outcome and when they did it was a sure sign a fraud. such a sure shot such a sure sign that exit polls were used successfully to expose and then overturn fraudulent elections in places like ukraine serbia and georgia polling companies were really good at this and they had great success here in the united states in the election of one thousand nine hundred eight when voting machines only recorded seven percent of the national vote but in the elections of two thousand in two thousand and two something odd beginning to happen right after the bush presidency began it was called red shift because in certain states where there were

a lot of voting machines being used republican candidates did better better in the vote the machines reported than in the exit polls in the election of two thousand and four new york pennsylvania florida and ohio led the charge with a red shift toward george w. bush of two hundred seventy six thousand votes in new york two hundred twenty eight thousand votes in florida hundred ninety thousand in pennsylvania hundred sixty thousand in ohio you can see here's the these are those four states and it continues on down through here so you can see this is this is the red shift and then there was some blue shifted to california in texas interesting but this was just the beginning of the voting machines they started the year two years earlier this is the two thousand and four election in two thousand and two when voting machines began to appear everywhere across america because george w. bush had signed into effect a law called the help america vote act or have

a big billions of dollars to the states so that they could buy these machines from private corporations like de bold and e s n l's. it was the high water point of the privatization of our vote for two centuries our vote was counted by volunteers and government workers overseen by representatives of the political parties that all changed in two thousand and two thousand and four now over for ninety percent of our vote is recorded or countered in secret on corporate machines and those corporations tell us who won our elections why is a secret well because the voting machine companies say they have copyright and trademark rights to keep their software and hardware secret from us and so that red shift has continued and in some cases accelerated in every election since two thousand and two to this day expect to see it this november if any of the exit polling companies will release the raw data something that most stopped doing when

their numbers were totally screwy in two thousand and four particularly in ohio back in two thousand and four tina brown had a t.v. show called topic a with tina brown on c.m.t. c and one day she was off and howard dean filled in for her dean had bev harris a black box voting dot org on the show and together they showed how easy it was to rig an election this is the official program that the county supervisor sees as we can see here howard dean has a thousand votes and lex luthor have five hundred so you're beating the absolute threat you see we have eight hundred votes here for you and four hundred for next loop through let's just flip those we'll make that four hundred. and we'll give one hundred votes to tiger let's just see what happened here we go back into gems the legitimate way and as you can see now howard dean only has five hundred votes there has nine hundred in tiger woods has one hundred votes we just edited down lection it took us ninety seconds it took only ninety seconds to change the outcome of an

election on a machine a few months later on march seventh of two thousand and five john kerry's wife teresa heinz kerry told a group of seattle guests at a march seventh two thousand and five lunch for representative adam smith according to reporter joel connelly in an article in the seattle post intelligencer two brothers own eighty percent of the voting machines used in the united states connelly said that i carry added that it is very easy to hack into the mother machines which is what you just saw our dean and about here as do canada experimented with voting machines and dumped them as did the never now though it's this week it's ireland we should follow suit it's not just that any technology particularly a secret proprietary technology is vulnerable to hackers i mean it's true but but far more important is the concept of our commons we created government in the united states to administer our commons the things we all own in common our roads

parks our police and fire stations our army our libraries our public schools and of course government itself because it administers all those commons government itself is the ultimate commons in the way that you and i tell our government how to behave is through our vote so the lynchpin of our republic is our vote it's the most crucial of the commons of the things that let us do everything else. and without any public debate or discussion george w. bush turned that most important part of the commons head beating heart of democracy the vote turned it over to fewer than a half dozen very secretive and republican party connected corporations. this is insane we need to learn from ireland's experience and sell our voting machines for scrap metal and go back to counting paper ballots by an adverse only every other developed country in the world does privatizing our vote was

a crime against democracy it's time to undo that crime and take our votes back from the will of the other corporations you can learn more over a black box voting dot org that's it for the big picture and i don't forget democracy begins with you tag you're it. all started here. for going global and now it's.

choose your place take your stuff. and. make your statement. to the world. it's true.