that's what i mean by disastrous. >> how about this. how about this? >> go ahead. >> those people are financed by special interests who are paying them to do that. america has the government that was purchased. >> so they're not just a disaster, they're also disgraceful? >> they are bought! >> they're purchased. >> they're purchased. to not deal with the problems that you want them to deal with. because dealing with those problems is threatening to financial systems. it's threatening to health care systems, it's threatening -- >> so dylan, what you're saying is, if these individuals were to be cooperative in the functioning of government, they'd end up losing the income that they draw, is that what you're saying? >> yeah, of course. you're doing a wonderful job of playing ignorant to my offerings, martin, but, yes, that is what i'm saying. that the lobbyist fund-raisers dictate policy, not just in what we talk about, but what we don't. and i must continue to actually talk about this exact subject in

a different context. >> go right ahead. >> thank you very much. show begins right now. well, good afternoon to you. i am dylan ratigan. today, part two of our "mad as he hell" series, get money out, done with our partners at t"the huffington post". we did expose the rise of money, including how the supreme court's citizens united decision limited corporate spending in secret in elections. today we dissect the ruse of the super pac. legal slush funds from anonymous donors yauds to threaten or to promote politicians or policies. it is the auction vehicle, if you will. and how the super pac culture has only just begun to fundamentally change how policy and politicians are auctioned. earlier this year, tea party

freshman congresswoman renee ellmers learned a valuable political lesson. don't get on the wrong side of powerful interests. her office had signed her name on to a bill allowing banks to charge retailers more money for using debit cards. signing on to bills like this is pretty routine, and usually goes unnoticed. we'll get back to her later. you see, it turns out that a well-funded karl rove-backed front group, americans for jobs security, has been spending money, attacking members of congress over precisely that issue. >> congress, stand up for local merchants, not wall street. >> in 2010, americans for job security spent $4.5 million in the last election, focusing on helping republicans in ten specific congressional districts. and rove has pledged to spend up to $240 million in 2012 through a network of nonprofits and super pacs that have been unleashed by last year's

citizens united supreme court decision. who funds americans for jobs security? no one knows. but so much money will flow through rove's groups that they are effectively acting as a shadow republican party. more important than the official republican national committee. and two former republican national committee chairman are working for rove's groups. while candidates can't officially raise more than $5,000 for any of these entities, they can show up at fund-raisers for them. as long as other people are the ones asking for money. all this money raising is bipartisan. so far, every major presidential candidate in 2012 has an associated super pac, or even several. ron paul has a super pac. michele bachmann has two. barack obama has his own super pac, has do senate democrats and house democrats. even media personality stephen colbert has a super pac. >> i don't know about you, but i do not accept limits on my free speech. but i do accept visa,

mastercard, and american express. $50 or less, please, because then i don't have to keep a record of who gave it to me. >> reporter: and often these entities are run by former staffers or lobbyists for the party. for instance, one of rick perry's multiple super pac s is run by rick toomey, funded by merck. mitt romney's super pac is run by three former staffers from '08 and the money is increasingly given anonymously, so the public is entirely in the dark. in one instance, a romney donor set up a shell corporation, funneled $1 million through it to romney's super pac, and then d disband the company. the donor was a former colleague of romney's at bain capital. these people have poured money into politics, money that is untraceable unless it is disclosed voluntarily. in 2010, the u.s. chamber of

commerce spent $31 million and reported none of it. >> our candidates that we will educate about and be positive about are people that have voted, no matter their party, have voted on issues that create jobs, that are positive for the business community. >> reporter: as for the tea party freshman, renee ellmers, she took her name off the bill, opposed by americans for job security. she claims signing on in the first place was a staff error. was it? or was it an acknowledgement of the new reality in washington, d.c.? the amount of money flowing into the political space in 2012 will be a record, and much of it will flow through these outside groups. money has always mattered in politics, but pretty soon, it may be all that matters. and here with us now, lisa rosenberg, government affairs consultant at the sun life foundation, and paul bloomenthal, our "huffington post" collaborator on this coverage. you wrote about the renee

ellmers story and the vote change in the face of super pac money as a threat. how closely correlated are vote changes and voting with super pac money flows? how traceable is that? >> it's really hard to trace something like that direct hi. what we're going to be seeing, though, is probably a lot more of this corporate or union money going to a lot of these outside groups, whether they're a nonprofit or a super pac, and being spent without the voting public knowing on candidates trying to influence where they stand on particular issues. and i think that that's a really important thing to look at. is you sort of have these groups that are operating in an unregulated atmosphere. and they're sort of operating like mercenaries for political operatives and for political campaigns on legislation. >> lisa, how distorting is the gigantic secret super pac money compared to the money that has already infected the political universe going back to,

certainly, '77 with the supreme court. so if we assume it was kind of screwed up, up until citizens united, give us the order of magnitude of how much more screwed up and where we see that since citizens united? >> it's incomprehensible, how much more screwed up it is now than it was before citizens united. and the reason is, because we -- the money acts as a microphone, so if there's a message that a lobbyist or a bank or a corporation wants to get to a member of congress, that message is going to come in a lot louder and a lot clearer when it is amplified by hundreds of thousands of dollars of dark money contributions. meanwhile, the voices of the rest of us, who don't have that kind of money get completely drowned out. >> the underlying real genius of the power structure, paul, from the money and the political standpoint is, as much as the money can influence what you do do or how the policy is written,

the money is incredibly valuable at preventing you from doing anything about something that i want to protect. give me a sense of how good money is at preventing revisions in the tax code, revisions and fairness in environmental policy, real bank reform debate. how good of a fence is it to prevent debate, in addition to make policy? >> i think that's probably one of the biggest things to look at in money in politics, that a lot of it is being used to play defense, to block action in congress. and you know, you look back at the whole mortgage debacle, you look at the kind of money that countrywide or these other mortgage originators spent on politics, you know, countrywide even operated a vip system for lawmakers to give them preferential mortgage treatment on their house. and this is in addition to their campaign contributions. and you saw from, you know, 2004 on, every attempt to reform that beaten back by lawmakers who

were increasingly given more and more contributions. and it was almost always the lawmakers who got more contributions from these industries that voted against the legislation that would reform it. >> and again, if you remember from our reporting on friday, 93 or 94% of the time, the campaign -- or the candidate who spends the most money wins. if you're wondering if money is determinative, the person with the most money wins. to that end, we did a podcast with tom ferguson at the university of massachusetts, political science professor, who basically described the entire political environment as a walmart or best buy big box store with a price tag on each chairmanship and each legislation, and just an auction process for who it's worth the most money to pay for. take a listen to professor ferguson in the podcast. >> they stuck posted prices on their committee assignments and the slots on those committees, like committee chairs, and party leadership posts.

you want the job, you write the cash and buy it at the price. and, you know, for the higher up you go in the party, the more you have to raise. i mean, these guys are running an auction system. and it's, of course, not just the democrats. this is -- there is successful bipartisanship in america. it has to do with money in politics. >> why are you laughing, paul? >> that is just a huge thing that has changed over the past 30 years, along with the introduction of campaign finance reform is, you know, originally, congressional chairmanships were given out based on seniority, a lot of the leaderships were given out based on seniority. and now they've sort of been changed to revolve around how much money can you raise, how much money can you give to your other lawmakers, especially the vulnerable ones. i mean, this is what you gets you a seat on an important committee. this is what gets you a chairmanship. and we could be seeing this increasingly involved with the super pacs, now that there are

candidate ones or ones that are sort of associated with a political party, and that candidates can raise money for them. maybe leadership posts will go to those who can raise the most money for a super pac from a corporation or a union. >> and lisa, how distorting to a policy debate is it to have the chairmanship in committees, whether it's democrats or republicans, determined by an auction process for who can raise the most money? >> i mean, we aren't going to have an honest policy debate in this country if this secret dark money keeps coming into our elections. it's extremely distorting and i think the other problem that we really need to address or consider here is that the messages that the lawmakers are hearing, money buys access. so they are hearing from the highest bidder. but in addition, this super pac money, in turn, buys candidate ads. you're going to see things that look like campaign ads from now until the presidential election, and the public isn't going to know who's paying for those ads

and where the money's coming from. it could be from, you know, one individual, incredibly wealthy person or a few corporations. and to me, what is frightening is the messages that we hear on television, we're not going to know who the mentssenger is. and i think that's very distorting. when i go to the voting booth, i want to know who my candidate may be beholden to, and i'm not going to know that with all this secret money that's coming into the elections. >> well, i can't thank both of you enough for helping all of us better understand this and to help us try to create a consolidated bull horn from the "huffington post" to the sun life foundation to, obviously, our resources here at msnbc and "the dylan ratigan show," to better understand this. we are intending, tomorrow, to launch a petition to deal with this, along with the debate around the formation of a constitutional amendment, and i hope that both of you will join that debate and help us continue to shake the bars on the cage, as it were, to the on the that they actually hear us. thank you, guys.

>> thank you. >> thank you. >> all right. and if you want more from the "huffington post," who has invested wonderfully in the journalism around this problem, paul and his colleagues at "the huffington post" on the front of their website today has a whole stack of reporting on the super pacs and the secret money in politics. more details on that renee ellmers story and the vote changing. plus, if you like the videos that you've seen here on the show, we have them posted as blogs on our website, dylanratigan.com. it is the full place for mad as hell: get money out of coverage, including that tom ferguson clip you just heard. coming up here on the tv show, grasping at straws. the latest gop straw poll results mean anything to the gop presidential race. the megapanel will be along. plus, before the bell, why the most important moment in our children's education is long before they ever see a classroom. how determinative is it?

we've talked about it before. we'll do it again right now. susy buffet, a huge advocate of early childhood education. our guest in just a moment. and dreams finally do come true. a look inside boeing's luxury plane. the dreamliner, coming up. we are building a website by ourselves. [ woman announcing ] there's an easier way. create your own small-business site... with intuit websites. choose a style, customize, publish and get found... from just $7.99 a month. get a 30-day free trial... at intuit.com.

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all right. education nation week across the networks of nbc news, and usually when you think education, you think k-12, maybe you think about the university system, student lending, all this.

but there is a national push gaining momentum that emphasizes the need for education before a child ever walks through the door into kindergarten. i'm talking about the first day that child is born, the first week that child is born, the first 6 months, the first 9 months, the first 2 years when the synapses of the brain are forming at a rate that is incomprehensible to all of us. the brain is determined long before kindergarten. this is science now. and yet, we underallocate resources to the single-most critical period of time in human development. randi weingarten is president of the american federation of teachers. susy buffett, chair of the sherwood foundation, one of the biggest advocates for early childhood development. and susy, it was a little over a year ago that we ran into each other, and you, effectively, downloaded a raft of statistics to me, one after the other, that horrified me, each one worse tan

the next, both in terms of brain development and resource allocation. a year later, give or take, where do we stand in terms of the awareness of this and investment in this? >> i think the awareness, dylan, has gotten a little bit better, slowly but surely. it's normally important. children are born learning, as you said. it's 700 synapses per second before the age of 3. that's a big number. it's an important number. too many children living in gr. and those cldren, i believe they pop out with the same ability to succeed, to learn. they don't have the opportunity. and that, in my opinion, is going to make the biggest difference long-term to the educational system in this country, when the kids are walking into kindergarten and prepared. that's not about the teachers. >> 700 synapses per second. the way a human being relates and solves problems, whether can i work in a group, all these things. >> right, right.

>> if you look, randy. >> the social emotional learning piece. >> say that again? >> i was just going to say, the social/emotional learning piece that happens or doesn't happen in a healthy way with a young child matter enormously once they get into the classroom. >> so, susie, can i say that she's absolutely 5,000% right? we know from brain research, sorry, i'm like emotional about this. >> no, you should be. >> we know from brain research that a child develops more between birth through 5 than probably at any other single age. we know from early childhood research that when you invest a dollar in early childhood, we get a rate of return in educational opportunity that's $7 later. >> and sometimes 16. >> some of the better research -- >> her father's warren buffett, so they get a better yield over

there. >> they know better. but the bottom line is this. poverty's going up and the amount that we're spending in early childhood is going down. so texas just wiped out the money for pre-k. georgia, reducing the money for pre-k. less dollars are going into pre-k today than in 2010. and yet we know, poverty is up and economic opportunity needs to be up, and yet we are reducing, not increasing, the dollars and the capacity for kids to go to pre-k. >> it's a snake eating itself, the dumbest thing you could possibly do. >> dylan ? >> yes? >> i want to give you another scary number. what randy's saying is exactly right. 6% of the head start eligible children in this country are in head start. 6%. that's how much money there isn't. >> so that's why when people start talking about how important education is, we know by the evidence, the data, that

this is a really good investment. and we're not making it. and, let me just throw out one more number, which is that parents, when they have to go to work, their kids are going somewhere. so if we can create these opportunities, it will cost them less in the private sector to put them into child care. we can get them into pre-k, we can help prepare them for the world that they are going to inherit. >> so, i want to talk about the current funding mechanism for education. which is based on the property tax base of a given neighborhood in this country. we learn with crime fighting in new york, we learn with crime fighting in los angeles that if you over-allocate resources to the most desperately in need region, where there's a lot of crime, that's where you put the cops, at night, in the neighborhood, where there's a lot of crime. you don't put the cops in every neighborhood in the same exact distribution at all times, we use what i call reverse hot

spotting, as opposed to hot spotting, where the more in need, the more desperate the need for educational resources, whether it's with poor and young, poor teenagers, whatever it is, and yet we spend more money on education than any country in the world, except for iceland. so we're not afraid to write checks for education, if you look at the overall spend. it's just that we do not spend it on any of these things. and from both of you, i'm trying to get a sense of why our priorities, because we're spending money. we're spending tons of money on education. it is not getting spent on things like this. and i don't know why. because it's not like we don't have the money. >> look, the cost, we know that the investment is real. >> what are we spending that money on? football? we are spending so much money -- >> actually, in terms of education, let me just say, when you compare us to the other ocd cups, that ones that outcompete us, we spend about 10, 15% more

than those countries, but when you actually do a dollar to dollar comparison and take out the money we spend for special education, and take out the fact that those countries are spending on a different ledger, retirement and health care benefits, our numbers are very close. so let's just -- >> fair enough. but the point is, we spend money -- >> but susie is right. we know what the research is. and what happens is, we don't have the will to actually build the pre-k facilities, hire the pre-k teachers, ensure that kids, particularly in -- at-risk kids -- >> make the base investment. >> yeah, get the spending. we saw it in new york city, where we had the base funding and there was actually some money, there needs to be the will to put the buildings up and actually invest in children this way. >> which is really susie's whole point, which is, i will provide or at least try to catalyze the beginnings and seeding of base funding in order to catalyze

this development. if people want to help, what do they do here? susie, what do you think? >> well, one thing -- one other thing i wanted to say, don, is the money, you know, this is not -- it doesn't work in an election cycle. that's what i partly think is a huge problem here. it's going to take 15 years to show that this works and that it matters. and that's not very interesting to the politicians. you know, and that's a sad statement, but it's true. we are -- you know, there are all these great people working on school reforms. smart, good people who want the best for the kids. but if we don't pay attention to what isn't happening in birth to 5 for the poorest children in this country, it won't matter what else is going on. >> susie is absolutely right. what i was trying to say before is, when principals were given dollars in new york city and one of the iterations of school reform, and their choice was to put money into third grade, which was one of the tested grades, or to invest, which was a higher dollar cost in pre-k or

kindergarten, they put money into third grade, because that was what they were immediately accountable for. so ultimate issue is, how do we actually do this investment? and that's part of the reason why, on an accountability system, you need to actually have more than the test score. but, ultimately, this takes governor, mayor, district superintendent, to actually drive these dollars and it also takes education of the public, which is why i'm so grateful that you're doing this, to say, this is a really good concrete, tangible investment. >> it's science. again, susie cornered me and just laid out the statistics with the 700 synapses, i was horrified. i was like, there's this tv show they have me hosting, we have to talk about this. so we do. obviously, that is the beginning is to talk about this. thank you, susie, for everything you do in bringing that to our attention. thank you, randy, for the exact same reason. let us be unrelenting for the obvious reasons. thank you, guys. straight ahead, away from

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but personally, i prefer a teleporter. we'll see if we can get boeing to work on that. next up -- >> if you vote for me, america, i promise you that i will deliver. >> once again, herman cain has received wild applause. mr. cain, please know that will not translate into actual votes. >> i couldn't come up with a better one myself, so i'm going to take that one and run with it. >> an "snl" parody, a straw poll slogan, it's a good week to be herman cain. the megapanel joins us right after this. the postal service is critical to our economy--

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c.h.i.p., i may, i would like to attack mitt romney as a flip florp. >> are you sure, it's late in the debate. >> was it before he was before? >> uh-oh.

>> was it was, he was before. border control! [ snoring ] >> that concludes the night's debate. as a reminder to chris christie, it's wide open, buddy. >> the president and fellow republicans, and yes, now "saturday night live," all targeting texas governor rick perry and the one-time republican front-runner has to be feeling the pressure. case in point, this weekend, in the florida straw poll, where former pizza company ceo herman cain pulled off a huge upset coming out to top the field, leaving perry and romney in the dust. then again, another loss for perry in michigan with romney the victor there. both of these results were telling us two things. one, there is no clear gop front-runner. and two, maybe the straw poll really isn't much of an indication of what voters want. maybe that is why republican fund-raisers are once again begging, pleading, anything they can really probably conjure to get new jersey governor chris christie to jump into the race,

because at least he represents a credible conservative voice in some people's eyes. let's turn to the megapanel. imogen lloyd webber, tim carney, and sam seder. do you agree with my analysis, tim? >> i think the fact of the matter is that the republicans do not have somebody that they love right now. and that means that they're going to do what they always do, which is settle for the other guy. who's the person in "pride & prejudice," not mr. darcy, the other guy. anyway, that's who republicans end up marrying, the one who they're supposed to marry -- >> except she married mr. darcy. >> yeah, they're not as smart as her. so mitt romney is that guy. and they're going to end up settling for mitt romney because he's the safe bet. you know, a little fling for -- >> is this a la john kerry '0 4? >> the democrats did that with kerry, but the republicans did that with mccain, with bush, with dole. they always do that. >> you get these cycles where you're kind of like -- >> it's amazing about romney,

because he wrote obama's first -- >> i met jon huntsman and he was saying the straw polls were basically irrelevant. of course, he would say that. he was saying it's all about new hampshire. look at how the straw polls are conducted and it's less than 3,000 people voting and half the time they've had very interesting ways that they can vote. i think, quite frankly, perhaps we should be looking at this -- >> but do you agree with tim's characterization of the gop field? regardless of the straw poll's credibility, that obama's best strength right now is there is not a formidable challenger? >> i agree, and also, with the fact that gop behaving as they are in congress at the moment, he'll be running against in the truman election strategy of the do-nothing congress. >> the problem that the republicans have is they have lionized ronald reagan so much over the years, they have created this mythological feature, which is no real relation to what reagan did, they have created a mythical, nonexistent candidate who will

answer all of their questions and that person does not exist. >> let me ask you a question from the democrat's standpoint. if we accept the fact that whatever the nature of the gop is, that it's undefined and it's at this point, uninspiring to a lot of people, at the same time, you have a president who's unpopular and becoming more unpopular. forget whether he's popular or not. you have an economy that is not producing jobs. you have a view on national security and war that he came in on that he never dealt, et cetera, et cetera. how does barack obama not get re-elected, because it seems like he may tactically be able to navigate the 2012 election. how does he make it through this and actually not come off as a, basically, part of the problem? that he is no better than -- the same way george bush went from being a hope for conservatives at a certain point in his presidency to conservatives were done with george bush, and -- at what point does obama become that to democrats? >> well, i mean, look.

i don't know. i mean -- >> is that -- am i right to even point out that? >> i think it will be interesting on november 8th or whatever, the day after the election, i think it will be interesting to see how democrats react, if president obama is still the president. but i think for any politician, they're looking at the next election and that's about as far as they're looking into the future. i think, yeah, there's going to be an atomic disappointment with obama if he gets a second term. >> at the same time, you can see why from a political analysis standpoint, chances for re-election for him as an incumbent president right now look better than -- look pretty good. panel stays. jobs, the subject. americans, of course, out of work. congress simply not addressing it, even on the right scale. we need trillion-dollar solutions for tens of millions of jobs, in the private sector, and yet we get billion-dollar solutions for a few hundred thousand jobs here and there. no wonder people are mad as hell. we're following the developments on capitol hill this afternoon, on a budget standoff.

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friday night. i'm not going to bottom getting all worked up over that. we've been through that once already. it's no surprise, however, that a record 81% of americans are dissatisfied with the way our country is being governed. the obvious question is who is the 19% and will you please stand up. that frustration continues to play out for a tenth straight day in its own version here in new york that up a wall street, which has been a small but consistent and unrelenting group downtown. whether it is those folks, tea partyers, liberals, conservatives, call yourself what you want, people are mad as hel hell. and the politicians that we have all elected to lead this country would rather bicker than actually tackle the trade policies, tax policies, and banking policies that are fundamental to the extraction of resources from this country that are preventing us from the multi-trillion dollar investment that we are desperate in need of for energy, infrastructure, et cetera, that would create the

jobs, that would create the prosperity. it's a vicious cycle. leio hendry, you know him and love him, former ceo of a string of fortune 500 companies. if you're yankee fans, you like yes network, and if you enjoy data, at&t broadband will be the band that you'll associate with leo. i, myself, am a data guy, so i think of you every time i do this. you have made a very strong point from the beginning about the order of magnitude of the problem. forget whether everybody agrees with your proposed solutions, whether the government should do it, whether it's the private sector. forget all that. it feels as if our government and our media, for that matter, doesn't even comprehend the order of magnitude of the problem. >> you know, you and i have talked for several years now, going all the way back to 2006, when you were on the floor, mostly, in your career. and if the problem is measured in tens of millions, the solutions demanded of you are quite different if they're measured in hundreds of thousands. and everything that i see and the frustration of congress is because there's simply an

unappreciation in congress of the magnitude of the problem, yet it's a problem that women and men see every morning when they get up and look to the right of their home or the left or within their own home. and in the standoff, dylan, that's going on this week is over something as moral, that's disasterly for the 84 communities that have been declared disaster zones, this calendar year alone. 11 months in, 10 months in. and we can't even find the courage to give disaster relief in pennsylvania, new jersey, and coastal carolina and vermont and earlier in arizona and new mexico and california and texas, where mr. perry comes from. so how do people have any confidence that we're going to address the tens of millions of jobs we need to find? and when we talk about sort of bipartisanship, partisanship, in general, i think it's a foolish exercise at this point in time. for 30 years now, there has been

little prospect for bipartisanship. when social issues permeated the political fabric, when a woman with's right to choose, pro-life, pro-choice, immigration, gay marriage, when they became insurmountable political issues in the eyes of so many members of congress, how do you have bipartisanship? and where i find the stress with the president is he keeps trying to pretend he can achieve this. so we see these sort of tepid responses around jobs and around other things in this false belief that mitch mcconnell and john boehner are going to come his way. they're never going to come his way. they can't. embedded in their souls, they can't come his way. so why doesn't he speak to the american people and let mr. mcconnell mr. boehner speak to the american people and let us decide whether we want to be on this side of the aisle or on that side of the aisle? >> the concern seems to be, though, that because of the -- particularly because of the role of money in politics, that if you have the democrats and republicans agreeing or

disagreeing on anything, it's what's never getting talked about, by either party, that really is the issue. and so, i can have this pretend bipartisanship all day, or i can have the very real polarization and extremism all day. but if what is never being talked about is the things that actually create energy efficiency, the things that actually create health, or the things that actually create learning. or the things that actually create investment. and if those things are never discussed, the entire apparatus seems to be not only irrelevant, but a liability. >> and it's become more pronounced with citizens united, which introduced even more -- a higher magnitude of moneys into the system, all anonymously. and we're also 13 months away from an election. so you're not going to change the dynamic. so when you come to congress, either as the president or as mr. mcconnell or harry reid or nancy pelosi, come with your best shot, so that women and men who have to run this cycle can go out and say, this is what i stand for.

this is my job's agenda, versus that job's agenda. this is my sense of health care reform, not this tepid, highly expensive, very dysfunctional thing we ended up with. give it your best shot. and don't try to get people to come in your direction when it's not going to happen. >> but i've seen what you've talked, and i've seen you testify before congress. i've seen your agenda. and you were praising china. you wanted a national industrial policy, very similar to what japan, frankly, has done. we look at japan, that's not a good model. they're paying down all the bad investments they've made for ten years. so when i see someone like you who's made $1.5 million in donations to the democrats over the last decade and want more government management of the economy, does this have to do with the fact this you're so buddy buddy with the politicians that you trust them? i trust the economy working more. 300 million people making individual decisions than harry reid and nancy pelosi and barack obama. >> but tim, if we have, as dylan and i just discussed, if we have

more than 30 million men and women unemployed in real terms, it's naive to think that the private sector alone can fix it. and it's naive to think that the government sector has an unlimited role in fixing it as well. >> but these private/public partnerships end up resulting in ethanol or solyndra or boeing, or ge. >> but that's the risk. >> every time i hear that the reason we don't educate young children properly is because we have bad schools, and when you fix the schools, we'll have a more sensitive employment policies towards those now-educated young people. don't give money to the government, because it doesn't do it very well. well, fix the government. don't back up and say, just because people jaywalk intrinsically in new york where you and i live, we're not going to have a jaywalking statute. this sense of nonregulation, noninvolvement by the federal government, when there are 30 million women and men unemployed today is nonsensical.

both people have a role. the private sector, which i am part of. but my criticism of this government, the whole government, is we have 20 nations in theg-20, 19 with an industrial policy we don't. >> i'm going to leave it on that note. a wonderful conversation. great to see you, leo. great to see you imogen, sam, and tim. up next, keli goff with a rant on something even more offensive to black americans than the "n" word. do stick around. you name it.

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all right. time for our daily rant. keli goff is here and the floor

is yours. >> thanks, dylan. as someone whose parents grew up in the segregated south, i am well aware of the fact that being followed around the store by a suspicious salesperson, which has happened to me, apppa in comparison with being called the "n" word every day, which happened to my mother. but is subtle racism even more damaging to black americans than blatant racism. toure asked hundreds of black americans dozens of questions on race. one of them being, what's the most racist thing that's ever happened to you, though the "n" word was mentioned, it wasn't as disturbing to subjects as what's called the unknowable. it's something that may have been withheld because of race. but ultimately, they'll never know for sure. this lack of clarity combined with the missed opportunity haunts them in a way being

called the "n" word by some jerk out in the open rarely does. the unknowable has become the more common form of racism. the reason, well, it's one thing to struggle to find a job in a tough economy, something people of all races are grappling with. but consider the psychological impact of knowing that studies have confirmed that even today, just by virtue of being black, you arele less likely to get a b opportunity than a white male with a prison record, even when you don't have one. but because we have a black president, accusations of racism are looked upon with greater suspicion today than ever before. in other words, unless someone actually calls you the "n" word, no one wants to hear you whine about racism. by the same token, most people, even racists, are too sensible today to use the "n" word, which leaves those forms of subtle racism between a rock and a boulder. those of us living in the age of obama are fortunate. on the other hand, life is a lot less complicated when you know

where you stand with people, good or bad, right or wrong. because when you're imagination's left to speculate, it can drive you crazy. sort of like when i'm being followed around a store by a sales lady who never offers to help. after all, there's no longer a sign that says "no colored allowed," but that doesn't stop me from wondering or from being driven a little mad by it all. there's something very interesting in that. unique to the -- to racism, but also to self in general. when facing an environment where there are known and unknown variables that may or may not at any given point in time be working against or for you, it really comes down to what your relationship with the unknown is. and your own ability to resolve that, because it can't be qualified. is that fair on my part? in other words, the danger of following into the paranoia of that, even if it's justifiable

paranoia, which it is, is by doing that, then you're by, definition, reducing your own creativity and productivity in that moment on that day. >> well, yes, and it's interesting, because actually one of toure's so-called solutions was dealing with racism subtly or otherwise is knowing your own self-worth. so i can't let the way a salesperson treat me define or dictate my self-worth or how often i'm going to go shopping. studies have shown one of the reasons african-americans are more likely to purchase things online is because a lot of them don't like dealing with harassment in stores. and i have to say, i was actually followed out of a store once that i patronized for years and the person asked me if i'd forgotten to pay. that's the kind of thing you deal, but my attitude is i'm going to go back there every time i can so that person sees my face and knows it. >> and it goes to the thresholds of our own boundaries and our own identity, are tested in these ways, and hard to imagine. a wonderful rant, as always. thank you, kelli. that'll do it for us. i'm dylan ratigan and "hardball's" up right now. take me to