welcome back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour women afford to hire as was sleep for years to achieve equality and to have more opportunities to succeed and prosper unfortunately these opportunities come with some hidden potentially deadly dangers more than that and it's everything you know is wrong and venezuelans revered chavez for the same reason that officials here in the united states aided jim i'll tell you what their reason is and why we should be taking a page out of the chavez playbook in tonight's guilty. today marks the two year anniversary of the focus szymon nuclear disaster on march eleventh two thousand and eleven a magnitude nine point zero three earthquake struck off the coast of japan forming a massive tsunami that ravaged that country's eastern seaboard the earthquake and

soon tsunami wiped out the plant's power and destroyed its cooling system causing meltdowns and several the facilities reactors disaster was a stark reminder of the dangers of nuclear power reigniting debate around the world and here in the united states about what to do with our own plants and that debate still rages on yesterday approximately forty thousand people marched through tokyo in opposition to prime minister shinzo aves proposal to restart japan's nuclear plants so it really learned anything from focus currently not going to a joint january report put out by environment america proximity of nuclear plants the united states to major population centers risks polluting the water of around forty nine million people in the event of a meltdown and more disturbingly a national regulatory commission the n.r.c. tasked with ensuring the safety and efficiency of our sixty five nuclear power plants as ignored important recommendations necessary to prevent a fukushima style disaster here in the u.s. . there's talk about focus on the future of nuclear power in the united states or

jordan weaver project scientist and science center fellow at the national resources defense council tyson slocum director of the energy program public citizen and paul gunter director of the reactor oversight project of nuclear thank you all for joining us today thank you great to be here paul you've you started with us on the fukushima issue two years ago i think you were our first guest on that right even back keeping us up to date on what's the current status of what's going on in japan well there are still billions of becker rolls of radioactive gas issuing off of these ruptured containment and there is really no indian side right now the you know the major concern is the first of all the instability of these elevated spent fuel pools where hundreds of metric tons of nuclear waste is basically in teetering buildings teetering pools and another earthquake could actually intensify this catastrophe to much much larger than what it is right now

if if this fuel loses its cooling and we have these open atomic fires in the atmosphere this this really threatens much of japan is that your know it could be worse actually here you know and we also have the ongoing release of radioactive water into the pacific ocean jordan you're a scientist what is the impact what is this what is the one of the health consequences of what's happened so far focused and if that sort of thing were to happen here in the united states what what could we expect well i think what we're hearing a lot is that you know common phrases no one died in fukushima due to radiation exposure and we feel it's a very narrow way of looking at it we do know that due to the migration of the plume after the accident that a number of a great number of the population were exposed to levels of radiation that will result in elevated cancers over their. lifetime didn't

a number of the people who went in really early on they did they was not necessarily due to radiation exposure it was due to just the ongoing recovery efforts and accidents during those efforts but i think it was seven workers i believe were seven workers died during the rescue efforts so to say that no one died because of this accident is a little bit of a mis characterization. in terms of the u.s. we you know we look at it in that in the way that the susceptible population in fukushima was much smaller than what we see in a lot of nuclear power plants here in the u.s. we have many large metropolitan area areas with densely dense population such as los angeles philadelphia and new york city and we feel that there needs to be a different way of discussing these severe accidents in the us and how we regulate them so that we can possibly enforce some common sense decisions when it comes time to relicense or side to plant within say fifty miles of a million people so enticing to what extent has that you know public so this is

that is on this issue to what extent have has there been a change in the dialogue about nuclear power in the united states is the result of for sure that we really haven't seen much of a change in the dialogue the nuclear regulatory commission has made some proposals some of them are good but they haven't done nearly enough to respond to this. crisis and the president made very clear just hours after the disaster happened in japan he made a public pronouncement saying that this in no way was going to impact the future of nuclear power in the united states so what we see is from the political establishment the united states a preservation of nucular status quo at a time when we cannot afford the status quo and the real thing about nuclear power here is that it is not competitive i mean fukushima highlighted these serious safety and security concerns but what we have also going on here is funded. mental

changes in the economics in the dynamics of the economics were cheap natural gas and cost competitiveness of renewables and energy efficiency technologies make nuclear power a relic of the past but the problem is is that the nuclear regulatory commission appears intent on preserving. allowing these. reactors that are increasingly dangerous to continue operating and to that paul you've got a campaign pledge of no no. let's freeze our fukushima is in fact what we've known since one thousand nine hundred eighty two that these fukushima style designs the g.e. mark one. should have been closed in one thousand nine hundred eighty two under the advice of dr steven an hour then with the atomic energy commission he said shut these plants down containments are too small if you look at a mark one containment volumetrically is one sixth the size of

say the three mile island containment so dangerous as these these larger reactors are these mark ones are accidents waiting to happen they're completely unreliable and so this is what went down in focus is what went down we have been in are there and i should say we have twenty three of them work once and we have eight of these more which are equally vulnerable to over pressurization under accident conditions and so you know right now the u.s. nuclear regulatory commission staff has recognized that these reactors are so dangerous but they don't want to shut them down they want to put vents with filters on these containments and the industry is unwilling to afford that cost so we have. profit margins versus safety margins now being argued out in the commission and it within weeks or maybe

a few months it's going to be voted on so we're seeing what very well is a politicized issue with significant safety consequences as these old aging bad designs are continued to be pushed forward it's incredible tyson you're nodding are you involved in this in public citizen along with natural resources defense council beyond nucular and many other organizations and so it's really critical that viewers and listeners out there talk to their members of congress because we're not hearing enough from congress to put pressure on the nuclear regulatory commission to stand up and do the right thing you know in the past the nuclear regulatory commission has bowed to pressure from congress to side more with industry the former chairman of the energy committee in the senate pete domenici very famously boasted in a book that he didn't feel that the nuclear regulatory commission was doing enough to promote nuclear power and he called in the commissioners and said either you start promoting nuclear power or else i'm going to come down on the agency hard so

the independence of the regulators has been called into question remains jordon the my understanding is that nuclear power would even exist in the united states for wasn't for a government backstopping price anderson basically the government we the people being the insurer of last resort because nobody on wall street would be willing to fund any of these things so true. it's very correct i believe the current number for the price anderson the liability limit is around twelve and a half billion dollars and after that the u.s. government is assumed to take the remainder of any. fallout financial fallout if you will from a severe accident and even with that kind of like handout to the industry in addition to you know taxpayer funded federal loan guarantees and subsidies you compound that with the. this like as tom mentioned low natural gas prices the all the ramifications are about to see to the food she was disaster kind of playing out

in the regulatory sphere this is going to cause even more problems for them and it's not an easy battle to begin with what is this ernest manas. is the new director of the department of energy does the. nuclear you know why i guess you'd expect that if he's going to head up the department of energy but or maybe not i mean it seems if this is the most expensive least efficient most dangerous form of electrical generation in the united states and i'm guessing there's a consensus on this panel as to that than tyson why why is this guy running the dio we and will and because he's a reflection of president obama's priorities president obama has repeatedly said that he is an all of the above energy kind of guy and the problem is that we cannot afford this all of the above energy platform. has come out strongly in favor as natural gas as the benchmark of clean energy future it's not going to be natural

gas it has to be renewables and efficiency we're not seeing enough emphasis on that and again the largest loan guarantee that is being offered by this administration is for a new nuclear power plant in georgia eight point three billion dollars of federal taxpayer backed loans for a project that is already way over schedule and over budget nuclear power is not. feasible into. energy systems. absolutely mazing jordan tyson paul thank you so much for being with us thank you tom. crazy alert james bond had octopussy. washburn no cold

as well just like the video speaks so. well with some different size weights to corrupt and best of luck. streak kilograms about the same way as want to just. kilograms the same way as one of these watermelons. six kilograms the same as both of them. that's right ms cars. coal has the world's strongest the drive toward her it's all the result of

part of work and dedication rumor has it that she's going to star in this year's production of the not. let me let me i want it all let me ask you a question. here on this network is what we're having we have our knives out. if you use this right spang staying there again you're in a situation where be. and i do want to talk about the surveillance of me.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. talking about the same story doesn't make it news. no puff pieces mean tough questions make it. worse if you're going to. white house to give it to the radio guy in fort lauderdale minutes from a quick. quote good news if you've never seen anything like good on trial.

so sometimes you know what you know and sometimes you know what you don't know and sometimes as the fires in theaters as everything you know. you know you think you're wrong if you really are your right. to say that you're really. really being you know is. this past friday was international women's day it is celebrate how far women have come socially politically and economically however new statistics suggest that increased opportunities for success come with hidden dangers so if you think more opportunities means a better life than everything you know is wrong joining me now is keli aboard a board a freelance journalist and contributor to the fix alter net and vice magazine the

most recent piece alter net is titled addictions shrinking. gender gap keli welcome hello thanks for joining us so what are the new statistics showing us about as the gender gap in terms of opportunity and income shrinks certainly has over the last five decades anyway. the impact that that's having on wood. well fifty six from around the world are showing a variety of different things. in terms of mental illness and mental health in countries that are more affluent women tend to have far more mental health issues and men as well but the gender gap there would be women presenting with a lot more mental health issues in terms of addiction and alcohol as this same thing tends to be two and they're likely true and they're likely related in the united states the gender gap between men and women using alyssa's substances and abusing alcohol has shrunk since the seventy's and eighty's. as well as in other

developed countries this tends to be true women use illicit drugs. not quite the rate that men do but much closer than in developing nations is that is it possible this is a function of access and means rather than an actual change in a person's life in other words women have enough money to be to afford to be able to go to a psychotherapist or get diagnosed or they have enough money to be able to afford alcohol or drugs were as when they were basically the property of their husbands were staying at home all the time they didn't have access to either of those things is it that or is it that the circumstances are actually driving women to become a little more you know to have more mental health challenges and to be more. more vulnerable more addictive. well i mean i think that's a great question and addiction and mental health are obviously very complicated

issues social agenda at a cultural but i think it's probably a little bit of both i think that in more developed countries where gender roles tend to be more liberal where women are working women are outside of the home women you know how volition and can conduct their own finances but they would tend to just have more access. but i also think that there are tens. b. a difference in the kinds of drugs and that and alcohol that women are abusing more than men so we have rates of women abusing tranquilizers which would be closely associated with mental health issues higher in developed countries reaching in sometimes surpassing the rate of tranquilizer youth in men. in traditional societies if you look at. early agricultural certainly pre-agricultural societies all around the world current indigenous societies aboriginal societies around the world what you find is that both women and men typically work two three four hours

a day and spend most of the rest of their time you know providing for food and shelter and spend most of the rest of their time with family and friends and community and now in this post industrial world women and men are doing this go go go eight ten twelve hour day seven days a week more and more crazy work could be the we've just stepped beyond you know what we spent one hundred sixty five thousand years evolving toward our evolutionary norm of of being tight with family and friends and going into the workplace both for women and for men you said women's rates of mental illness and drug addiction are hitting that of men's could be the both of us are being made crazy by society both genders. i mean i think that so wonderful point doubtless in more traditional societies the function of the family to support or the community and to support and engage with it helps people mentally and would therefore lower

rates of mental health issues perhaps i'm perhaps lower rates of addiction in the united states you see you know i saw a leash a nest individuals are interacting more with technology than sometimes other human being very think that perhaps that could play a role that's interesting so what do we do about this. well that was well i think it important thing to consider experts say across the board that women when we're trying to treat them for alcohol and drug addiction need different things than men do they need more support they need childcare they need you know a lot of times women are reacting to past trauma that can be sexually based trauma which is far more prevalent in women who abuse alcohol and drugs than it is in men so i think as throughout the world and especially here in the united states we see this gender gap gap decreasing we see women using drugs and alcohol at a higher rate than they ever have before we need to feel like well going one step

beyond that how do we address that how do we help women in ways that perhaps are different from the way that we help men fast and kelly thanks so much for being with us today. ok thank you for having me great talking. since news broke last week about the death of venezuelan president hugo chavez as reactions to that leader's passing have been pouring in while many would argue that chavez did incredible things for a venezuelan its people there are those especially here in the united states who don't have such a rosy view of the former leader that's where associated press business reporter pamela sampson comes in a piece was tuesday speaking about the legacy of chavez samson wrote for the a.p. chavez invested venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state run

food markets cash benefits for poor families free health clinics and education programs but those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering middle eastern cities including the world's tallest building in dubai and plans for branches of the louvre and the guggenheim museum in abu dhabi. you heard that right sampson appears to be arguing the providing healthcare education and employment opportunities for millions of people is far less important than flaunting your wealth for the entire world to see with fancy buildings that the entire population out of crippling poverty is no thing compared to building a big glitzy building or opening up a new museum. if these are the feelings of just one journalist we can move on but the problem is that these sentiments are echoed throughout our country oil corporations have become so powerful and influential in our society that the idea

of nationalizing our oil and using the money from it the way the venezuelans the saudis in the norwegians among others do to help the american people is according to a good man shall wisdom crazy and absurd this is the reason why up until chavez is to us that the us and venezuela have frosty relations at best shot as his decision to use his nation's vast sums of oil wealth to help its people instead of adding to the bottom line of corporations irked many u.s. politicians and government officials. but what's really going on here why does so many americans believe that corporate luxury is more important than life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. in a society achieving safety and security is step one for hundreds of thousands of years humans achieve safety and security by giving it to each other and getting it in return it's what we did and similarly the more safety and security you gave to

others the higher status you achieved archaeologists call societies like this potlatch societies or obligation societies as status is gained by giving away as much as you can for example a giant feast in parties called potlatch is this is only a slight variation on the model that will go chavez used in venezuela and it's why is people loved him so much by using his nation's oil wealth to give venezuelans access to education health care improved housing and better living conditions chavez gave safety and security to millions of people and resume rewarded with high levels of admiration and respect unfortunately our modern society has become infected with a sort of cultural mental illness the late professor of native american studies at u.c. davis checked for us told me his people call it what to go by native american word meaning cannibal or thief. in western society we get safety and security for making

money and then using that money to buy goods and services more goods and services you produce the more you are paid the more you are paid the more you were able to achieve health and safety and security. this is the model that america has today and it's extremely mentally ill formants why some billionaires say things like oh i have thirty billion once i get forty billion then i'll be happy that's why americans might think that shiny skyscrapers are more important than the social welfare of an entire nation but let's look at the numbers behind these two approaches to safety and security before chavez was president according to a british newspaper the guardian unemployment in venezuela was at fifteen percent as of two thousand and nine it was a seven point six percent before over chavez was president extreme poverty was at twenty three point four percent as of two thousand and eleven it was at eight point five percent meanwhile here in the united states millions of americans are

consistently unemployed each year and in the last fifteen years extreme poverty in the united states has doubled the number of u.s. households living on less than two dollars per person a day which is known as the extreme poverty line more than doubled between one thousand nine hundred six and two thousand and eleven from six hundred thirty six thousand to one point four six million americans according to the latest census bureau data a staggering fifty percent of americans are either living below the low are either low income or living below the poverty the numbers here paint a pretty clear picture of the chavez approach to governance and his robin hood ask mental mentality worked for venezuela during fourteen years in office chavez managed to drastically improve the lives of venezuelans while rebuilding an entire nation he knew that the best way to achieve safety and security was not by

constructing lavish buildings but through maintaining a strong social safety net and ensuring the venezuelans had the resources that they needed to survive. america should take a page out of the chavez playbook every american should have a comfortable baseline from which to step out into the world and survive and prosper that means protecting this nation social safety net and strengthening programs like social security and medicare it also means raising the minimum wage and making a living wage so that americans can provide themselves and and for their families the country is only as strong as its people. it's time that america was strong. and that's the way it is to live monday march eleventh two thousand and thirteen for more information check out our website the thom hartmann dot com free speech dot org. and hulu dot com slash the big picture and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active tag your it sort of.

to some people extreme cold isn't a chilling threat to life or imminent death it's a cooling if you look you can see that the water in the rates in my body feels really warm now and this is good for you. they plunge into icy water to make themselves stronger you can't get used to the cold if you want what you can tolerate it and you can struggle with. people of snow and ice picks as a frost. surviving the cold sea truly. wealthy british style sign it's time to rise.

markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kaiser report on our. thank. you.