the suspect. they would like to do is go did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct call for us. to you know i'm john mark and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on will we go beyond identifying a problem to try to rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america among them are you ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. mama i'm so arbonne in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. a new state department

report says that the keystone x.l. pipeline would have little impact on global climate change or can we really trust a report written by contractors affiliated with oil giant trans canada the company responsible for the pipeline more on that system also the death of forty six year old academy award winning actor philip seymour hoffman is truly a tragedy but the most tragic part of it all is that his death could easily have been prevented tell you how into night still to take and islam was the fastest growing religion in the country last decade but many american muslims still feel like second class citizens but was ever a change last minnesota congressman keith ellison the person muslim ever elected to congress in tonight's special monday edition of conversations with great minds.

you need to know this on friday the state department released its final and by. a metal review on the keystone x.l. pipeline project something that both supporters and opponents of the project have been eagerly awaiting review had been on everyone's mind since last summer when president obama addressed the nation and said that he would not go forward with the keystone pipeline if the greatly increased carbon pollution and greenhouse gas emissions take a look. but i do want to be clear allowing the keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our nation's interest. and our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution but so what did the review reveal about the keystone pipeline and carbon pollution well for the first time the state department's review

acknowledges that the keystone x.l. pipeline could speed up climate change the review finds that the prime pipelines effects on the climate will be similar to adding five point seven million new cars to americans road that mean road that means tons and tons of carbon pollution will be pumped into our already carbon polluted skies thanks to the keystone x.l. . and we already know that the pipeline would carry intimate more than one hundred eighty million metric tons of c o two every year more c o two than fifty one coal plants put into the year review also acknowledges that approval of the keystone x.l. pipeline could expand tar sands oil production and the tar sands oil in particular presents many difficult challenges that's because tar sands oil is the dirtiest form of liquid fuel on planet earth takes a great deal of energy to extract it from the ground and clean it up tar sands oil is next to impossible which means a spill could have a riff effects on our nation's water supplies report also confirmed that the

keystone project will not create many jobs despite claims from supporters of the pipeline. so will these new revelations be all the proof president obama needs to say no to be boiled and no to the keystone x.l. pipeline. joining me now for more on that is casey lefkowitz director of the international program with the national resources defense council susan welcome thanks so much for having me on the show thanks for being here what specifically did the review of knowledge about the impact of the keystone x.l. and stood for extra large. it pretty much does mean you think about a pipeline coming all the way from northern alberta down to texas. i mean to say about its effect on climate change we know this this review is really a market change over the earlier drafts that that we'd seen from the state department for the first time they presented one of their say an area is that show that the keystone x.l. tar sands pipeline could indeed drive tar sands expansion and therefore also drive

the climate emissions and they said that this was a scenario that might take place for example if their pipeline constraints but we know that there are pipeline constraints people all across the united states and canada are saying no dick parsons pipelines wherever they're being proposed so i mean when the when this report was released on friday. stalled. you know the sun sort of it seemed to be the way it was characterized in. right across the board from conservative media to the mainstream media to a progressive media was that basically it was. no big deal go ahead and do it is that you know on closer examination is that actually your sense of essentially what the state department saying you know it's interesting there was a lot of industry spin before the report came out and so what you saw is that the media that was characterizing the report as you know being for approval of the pipeline all came out before people actually had time to read the report real and

once we read the report we could see that it provided a lot of different scenarios and most markedly it did not reach any conclusions about what the president should or shouldn't do in fact it lays the groundwork for the president to reject keystone x.l. as you just showed last summer he made an important climate address where he said. if keystone x.l. has a significant impact on climate it should be rejected and that's what this report shows that shows clearly that this pipeline is not in the national interest now one of the one of the arguments that's made. one of the positions i guess that was part of their corporate spin early on about what what you know what i haven't read the report but i've read the stories about the report so what i thought i knew you're here to tell me everything i know is wrong but what i thought i knew was that the reports essentially this stuff is going to get out of the ground in alberta they're going to figure out a way to get it to the countries that want it either by train across the rockies over to coover off to china or by train across the united states out of the gulf

coast. it's going to happen and so this is going to happen and we might as well do it in a way that's least likely to have exploding trains is that is that in the report there's that was certainly there and did i accurately grab the message that was being put out was fried you actually you accurately grab the message that was being put out but what's actually in the report is a number of scenarios so it says under some scenarios keystone x.l. might not be the main driver and under others it might be the main driver of tar sands expansion and thus of climate emissions and when we look at reality of what we really know what we see is other pipelines aren't happening tar sands development is not inevitable there's a lot of opposition to it it's very expensive it's very dirty industry analysts themselves have been saying keystone x.l. is actually essential to having that expansion take place i want to come to other options like rail they're actually not really very good options for tar sands tar

sands is a special kind of oil and it's far away it takes special technology to put it into a rail car it's more expensive to transport by rail so what we're really looking at is not rail versus pipeline or dirty energy versus clean energy we have so much better choices than tarp. which leads me to the question that. i don't understand why this hasn't been the frame i mean the major framing question from our media and certainly from even opponents of the keystone x.l. pipeline you've got this incredibly dirty carbon based fuel source that is it can be converted basically coal can be ground up and convert it into something that looks like a slurry sludgy they can call oil. bituminous coal and bituminous whatever it is and. it's filled with poison and you've got to extract all that poison from an in order to get the gasoline out of it and the diesel fuel. they're going to ship it all the way across north america all across the united states down to

the gulf coast so that they can extract all that poison which is going to huge huge piles of physical slag hundreds of millions of tons of poison going into the air not just the carbon but the stuff that causes cancer is the stuff that causes asthma it's all going to a cancer alley go across texas and louisiana is going to be amplified you know many fold. we get the poison and the reason that they want to get into the gulf coast is so that they can export their gasoline and diesel fuel so china or mexico or england get to get the good stuff we get the poison why doesn't if this is what's going if i'm accurately characterizing first of all what's happening here then why isn't the question being asked if candor is so eager to sell this stuff we're so eager to have it as gasoline and oil and it's been sold as american and energy independence why don't they were fighting the damn stuff in alberta well you know it's a great question and really what we need to be doing if you point out is looking at

this as you know isn't it time to draw a line in the sand and say we don't actually need this form of dirty energy anymore and why are we being asked to put u.s. lands and waters our heartland our farmland at risk in order for the oil industry to be able to access those higher prices at overseas markets and the basic truth is we're being asked to do that because canada has essentially filled its capacity for refining and canadians and canadian from the nations of communities are saying no we don't want the tar sands pipeline across our lands ok so because it's seems like would be a hell of a lot cheaper easier and faster to build a refinery than to build a pipeline that goes with thousand miles. and so again why doesn't the average american or wired americans asking the question. if canada is unwilling to refine this stuff why should we well and what's also interesting is that you know right now tar sands is basically landlocked so most of it is serving our our midwest you

see these huge piles of pet coke for example in chicago is that the slow way until now and exactly the poison dust is poisoning minority communities most that's right it absolutely is a big health issue from from refining that we see we see that already in our midwest and it's what would happen in the gulf if the tar sand started coming down there but the other issue here is the price of oil you know there's actually a glut of tar sands right now landlocked in canada and the united states which means that oil prices are lower than they might otherwise be that's good for consumers it's bad for the oil as well trying to canada a year ago admitted that if this thing is completed the price of gasoline you know it's going to go up another point that nobody gets in the minute we have left or so do you think president obama is going to you know if he could read this report one way or the other is he going to is going to go with those that are not so president obama will read this report will be looking at the national interest determination and frankly will be listening i think to the voices of people all across the united states tonight are holding vigils we've got vigils in almost every single state

across the u.s. taking place right now to say no to keystone x.l. that's a powerful message to the president i think is going to listen and i think he's going to do the right thing and reject keystone x.l. i was on the radio today for three hours taking calls from the stars and i had callers from from the bay area from colorado from the grasp of there was somebody in some little town in north korea i mean all literally all over the country i'm going to my city hall tonight or i'm going to the local state department office there was one of chicago i just came from the white house just now where we were holding the vigil and i was having them describe on the air the signs you know people all over the united states are doing this it's a great time to be speaking out on the fact the matter is the president is a politician which means that he needs to he will listen to the people if enough people stand up and speak out susan thanks for the great work. thanks so much great to have you with us. coming up the n.f.l. stands for national football league but the league should probably consider changing his name to the national florrie lowder league the reason why right after

the break. i got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. stay with substory. let's give this guy like you would smear about guns instead of working for the people most issues in the mainstream media we're pretty much on the bridegroom's vision of what. they did rather. it was a. very hard to take i think once again to put them on here as a place to live happy ever had sex with her thick hair cut.

if it was safe. if if what if. the people.

scrutiny is yesterday evening millions of americans watched the seattle seahawks absolutely demolished peyton manning in the denver broncos forty three eight in the super bowl most football fans know that the seahawks were the league's best defense this year the broncos it's best often but one thing they probably don't know is that the national football league the n.f.l. is freeloading off the american public that would be you and me the league takes in about nine billion dollars every year which according to some sources is more than the g.d.p. of fifty three countries by all accounts it is one of the most successful businesses in the world the only problem it's not a business not technically at least the u.s.

tax code the league is a five a one c. six x. exempt nonprofit individual teams like the dallas cowboys or the new england patriots are considered for profit businesses but the league itself. not for profit so how did it get this privilege that's as patrick ruby contributor to sports on earth and politico whose latest article is titled national freeloader league shirl watch the super bowl your tax dollars are paying for patrick walker please help me thanks for joining us tonight. what does what does it mean to us that the n.f.l. is not for profit so what it means is that the league office which is the office on park avenue in new york city that administers the rules that does the television contracts that negotiates with the players for their collective bargaining agreement where roger goodell is in charge as the league commissioner they are considered and you know how much he is paid twenty nine point five million dollars annually at least on his last tax rate so they're not paying property taxes and pay

no income to this is this is the thing the league itself that nine billion dollars you talked about a lot of that is taxed but the league office which takes in about two hundred fifty plus million dollars a year from the various teams in terms of membership fees and dues that money is not taxed but money is also a tax write off for the individual teams and it's not taxed because of a really weird quirk in the tax code that considers them about five zero one c six type of organization other followin see six organisations are trade associations local chambers of commerce essentially congress want to make those you know general business promotion organizations takfiri the n.f.l. though it's a professional football league that specific language was added to the tax code the professional sports league skill professional football which. is so so who added it and when what's amazing is no one really knows how about snuck into it totally

unrelated bill but what we do know is that it happened around the time of the n.f.l. a.f.l. merger and there was a time where congress was trying to. doing favors for the n.f.l. to sort of make pro football more viable and with the size of the podium yeah i mean somewhere up in heaven now if all the obvious is getting their winnings right for sure the seahawks are owned by paul allen the microsoft name one of the richest men in america he got the state of washington to cough up three hundred ninety million dollars to build a stadium. how did how did these football teams. for that matter baseball teams and not to get a lot how do they get away with this this is where the really big public subsidies for sports in general and for the n.f.l. are this is where we as taxpayers are really getting our pockets picked and you ask you how does that happen and it's simple you know these leagues they sort of are given antitrust protection by congress as such they've gone monopoly on the supply

of teams so they can say ok minnesota for instance is going to build a new stadium for the vikings hey taxpayers local politicians if you don't build a new stadium will move to l.a. will move somewhere else where they will they basically have states and cities and municipalities bidding and she shrugged this is it's a racket it's an absolute rock you know it goes it does go beyond just sports and we do see this in corporate america as well and i was just doing a you know a couple months ago it's the same scam but in fact i bernie sanders once suggested the any state any state that participates in this kind of thing should get loser federal highway funds which i would put immediately and you know that's a great idea there was there was actually an idea that was floated in the sun in ninety nine and again was looked at a couple years ago the idea they were going to slap one hundred percent federal excise tax on any state or local subsidy to an individual business or it like a sort of like one type of business and overnight that would have killed all this

kind of corporate welfare because if you are. and you're asking seattle to kick in whatever five hundred million dollars to a stadium wall if the federal don't. the turn around tax you got same fire really and what's the point. of course this didn't pass that fact today even get up for a vote amazing patrick ruby you have done an extraordinary bit of research and write the great article thanks so much for being with the great been all great talking with you. today movie fans and film aficionados all over the world are mourning the death of one of the greatest actors of all time philip seymour hoffman known for such films as boogie nights capote the master and most recently the hunger games hoffman had a reputation as an actor's actor the type of guy both casual moviegoers and artists

respect he was a true actor not just a performer and was capable of playing a wide range of characters he was found dead in his new york city apartment around eleven o'clock sunday morning just blocks away from where his kids were playing at a playground police found a syringe in bags of heroin at the scene so all signs point to a heroin overdose as the cause of death. details are still emerging but it appears that the heroin found in hoffman's apartment belongs to a nasty strain of laced era one known by such names as ace of spades and theraflu often was only forty six years old a master of his craft and the father of three young children it is truly a tragedy that someone was so much talent and so much to live for died so young. but perhaps the most tragic thing of all is that hoffman's death could very easily have been prevented it could have been prevented if we in the united states started to do what countries like the united kingdom and switzerland have been doing for

years and that is prescribing heroin to heroin addicts i know it sounds counterintuitive but it actually makes perfect sense once you understand how heroin works opiate drugs like heroin are highly addictive. but actually abuse of alcohol and tobacco cause causes more serious damage to the body paired heroin doesn't ravage the liver doesn't cause lung cancer while heroin addiction does have some negative long term effects the real health dangers of their own abuse are addiction overdose and disease heroin overdose happens for two main reasons one the user is inexperienced or careless and uses too much heroin accidentally or too the user has become so addicted that they start using more heroin and more potent strains of heroin to get a stronger that could be what cause philip seymour hoffman's over those the other major risks of heroin addiction actually have nothing to do with the drug itself where the drug is illegal addicts don't usually have access to clean needles and so

many of them end up sharing needles dirty needles with other users in the addict community and as a result many addicts end up contract hiv or other blood borne diseases like hepatitis c. as long as they use heroin drug addicts run the risk of either overdosing or contracting deadly diseases. by criminalizing her addiction like we have done here in the united states we've actually increased both of these risks and we have decreased the excuse me and we have also increased the cost to all of society you and me included. by the behavior of this very small percentage of americans who are here at us instead of punishing addicts or scaring them away from public view we need to treat their condition like a public health problem. this is exactly what countries like great britain switzerland and until november canada have done with their heroin prescription programs. once an addict gets

a prescription for illegal heroin he has access to safe clean needles and the purest forms of heroin possible the addict also has access to anti addiction programs to help him wean himself off heroin while getting the dosage he needs to avoid painful withdrawal symptoms critics say the prescribing heroin endorses heroin addiction but the facts don't lie heroin prescription programs work after the swiss legalized prescription programs in the mid one nine hundred ninety s. they saw an immediate drop in both drug related deaths and deaths due to aids among drug addicts more recent studies have reached the same conclusion. a pipe paper published by the new england journal of medicine in two thousand and nine looked at a set of experimental prescription programs in canada and found that they led to a significant reduction of crime and overdose deaths similar new research put out in two thousand and twelve by the european monitoring center for drugs and drug addiction found that the benefits of prescription heroin included

a major reduction in the extent of continued injection of street heroin improvements in general health psychological wellbeing and social function as well as major discs and gauge went from criminal activities such as acquisitive crime to fun continued use of street heroin and other street drugs. study also found that heroin prescription program saved more lives than traditional addiction treatment programs that use a drug known as methadone as a replacement for. the way many people suggest that methadone a synthetic drug is actually more addictive and destructive than heroin which is derived from opium. but studies only tell half the story for heroin addicts themselves prescription programs are a chance to tackle their problems. without having to worry about going to jail and without having to steal to pay for a fix there's a former addict dave murray told the canadian broadcasting company about his experience with an experimental prescription program in vancouver. not all that

long ago dave murray would shoot up heroin in vancouver's filthy alleys he credits his turnaround with a pilot project where he was prescribed heroin by a doctor instead of buying it off the street over there from the effect of it is. this for us it was in my life. a stress of every day having to find a drug ultimately heroin addiction is a public health problem and if we're truly interested in doing something about it when you start treating it like a public health problem this means to consider solutions like heroin prescription programs even though they may seem counter-intuitive or politically. difficult in the end fighting heroin addiction and drug addiction in general for that matter should be dealt with in the most practical fashion possible and a medical fetish that's why the united states should start its own heroin prescription program as soon as possible. as long as heroin is not available by

prescription the public is at risk and people's lives are at stake. after all of heroin or already available by prescription it's a very good chance people like philip seymour hoffman still be with us. coming up although islam is one of the fastest growing religion in the country any american muslim. they feel as though they are treated as second class citizens what does this say about the future of religious freedom in america i'll ask the fellas first muslim member of congress in tonight's special edition of conversations with great minds the great.

chance our forces that. still. sucks and finish line out of merit on. what has happened here.

thank you. i would rather as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t.e. question for. ninety

conversations with great minds i'm joined by one of the strongest progressive voices on capitol hill keith ellison u.s. representative from minnesota's fifth congressional district as the first muslim ever elected to congress he's also the first african-american ever elected to congress from minnesota an outspoken advocate for peace abroad and equality at home congressman ellison is the co-chair of the congressional progressive caucus and is a leader comes to issues of civil rights and religious freedom his new memoir my country tis of thee my faith my family our future is a fascinating look at the values and experiences that have shaped us beliefs congressman ellison joins us now in the studio congressman ellison welcome back good to see you great to see you again too for i love i know i do.