"Even knowing what's happening in Japan, we have Republicans saying we have to cut regulatory spending on places like nuclear energy," says Mike Papantonio, who notes the similarities between the refusal to learn from BP and the refusal to learn, now, from a deepening disaster in Japan.

From the shift of the risk of dangerous fuels onto the taxpayers to the glib "every energy type has its dangers" dismissals, Mike breaks down the problems with the ways we talk about disasters, energy policy, and why we don't seem to want to invest in clean, safe fuels like solar and wind.

"There's going to have to be a new kind of union movement. It's got to be one that is much more rank and file, much more bottom up, the organization has to be in the workplace, and in order to go beyond legalistically bargaining wages, people have to take action in the place that they work," says David Newby of the AFL-CIO.

Laura caught up with David this past weekend in Madison at the largest protests yet, afte Scott Walker forced through the bill to bust public employee unions. He talks about the prospects for a new kind of union movement, different from the one of the past 40 or 50 years.

Communities of color, Monica Adams notes, "were already organizing, we already knew about the wrath of Walker, we knew how he was over Milwaukee, we knew that he'd have targeted attacks." It was only natural, then, for Monica and her colleague at Freedom Inc., Kabzuag Vaj, to be at the center of the organizing against Scott Walker's cuts.

Monica and Kabzuag discuss the issues beyond just attacks on unions, Walker's SB 1070 clone bill that attacks immigrants, and much more. "We have to be thinking about the people who don't get mentioned by name, because those are going to be the ones who get impacted the most," Monica notes.