good morning from new york. i'm chris hayes. for the first time, a u.s. bishop has been indicted on charges of covering up child abuse. bishop robert finn of kansas city pleaded not guilty to charges he failed to report a police accused of taking explicit photos of young girls. around the world, the "occupy wall street" demonstration is catching fire in 951 cities and towns throughout north and south american, asia, africa and

europe. we have details coming up. i'm joined by kevin williamson, melissa harris perry. she also writes for a wonderful magazine called "the nation." with us is "new york times" economic reporter, katherine ramble and john fugelsteng, who has also been a guest on the show before. i want to talk to you about what is going on in the global spreading of the uprising virus as it were. i want to go to london after a relative handful of protesters started camping out, the movement is spreading worldwide. in tokyo, they marched after founding occupy tokyo based on the movement in new york. in sydney, australia, they real lid and proclaimed through megaphones, we are the 99%. in the philippine capital of

manila, protesters held signs proclaiming solidarity with objecting pay wall streit. i want you guys to way in on this. the protest in london is gathering at the london solidarity. we want to check in with keir simmons who is reporting live. keir, what's happening right there? what's the pood? >> reporter: well, chris, several hundred protesters are gathered here now. this is wa the time when they were due to gather. so we may well see many more arrive. it is a very peaceful mood, lots of placards with the same kind of slogans as you have seen across the united states. now, just behind us, behind the building there is the scare qua front of the london stock exchange. that's what they want to move to. much like new york, the area is private land. already, there are signs up telling the protesters that they are not going to go in there.

if they are large enough, they may quite simply ignore that. there is a relatively small police presence. they tell me they are prepared to move in in greater numbers if it is required. there has been a police helicopter overhead. all are able to contact each other through the social media and talk with the other protesters there in new york and across the united states. it has that accepts of a global gathering. >> keir, how much attention have folks in england been paying to what's going on in new york? we got a lot of news here in the states about two sort of moments in british politics. the u.k. uncut movement which was a large movement against tuition cuts and austerity measures. that was largely nonviolent. we have a lot of news about the riots that happened. how much have folks in england been watching what's going on down in wall street. >> we have been paying attention. there has been in the news, and in the newspapers but i think if this protest begins to build some steam, then clearly the

attention here will be greater. as you say, we have seen a number of protests here. the student protests earlier in the year and before christmas and then not so much protests but the riots that we saw in the inner cities over the summertime. so we have seen large numbers of demonstrations with thousands of people often young people involved. the question will be whether or not this gets that kind of numbers. if it does, it certainly will get a lot of attention. they are talking about being here into december. there will need to be a large enough number for that to happen. >> thanks for your reporting today. i really appreciate it. >> katherine, i wanted to go to you first. what i think that is so interesting about this is the sense in which we tend to be very domestically focused in the u.s. famously. the economic misery that people are feeling here with the recession, we tend to have a kind of myopia about it. what do you think it says about the situation of the global economic situation that this has this sort of rest sonance acros

the world. >> i think the idea that poor people deserve better living standards and people are entitled to jobs is not terribly original. it makes sense that is resonating around the world. what i think is more interesting is that this message had sort of a genesis in the united states and that it took off here and people are identifying with the united states in that the u.s. is considered this privileged, rich country throwing their weight around. people abroad are dissting wishing between the masses and we are not this spoiled group of rich people. >> some writing pointed out, everybody in the square in wall street pretty much is in the top 1% globally. if you are going to talk about what the globe is, like we are pretty much everyone in the states is, if not in the top 1%,

pretty high up there compared to the amount of the world. melissa, what were you going to say? >> i feel like a bit of a fuddy-duddy. >> for example, last night, i went down to wall street and took my mom and my daughter with me. we were walking around. my mom says, oh, my mom is in her late 60s. she says, i remember this. this looks so familiar. i remember this. she had this really strong sense of kind of a familiarity and also return to a particular moment. she was talking about some of the young people in the crowd and how they reminded her in certain ways of things she had experienced and also saying, i don't know that we would have had the discipline to do the human microphone. we stood for a long time and listened to them as they were basically conducting a business meeting.

they were on the corner. they couldn't use any projection. >> they are doing their mike checks where one person says it and the crowd responds to send it out. i said to mom, we are standing on the corner where the jackhammer is and the other end of the park is dead silent. as pure organizational strategy, you might want to move down to where it is more quiet. the fact that she was feeling the sense of solidarity and i was feeling, like, could we get some strategy going here. >> in earlier times, i have done a little bit of research on this. there were protests. there were riots during economic turmoil in the '60s, in '70s. some of it was tied in with civil rights movements. a lot was economically motivated. up until recently, we hadn't seen any of that in the united states. i this i a large reason behind that is that a lot of that organization was done by the labor unions. labor unions represented not only their own members but they

had the resources. >> they have now arrived at the party. >> they do have a set of strategies that are well-honed over these years. >> that's all the more reason why we can say this is a grass roots uprising. i was on our friends at fox last week. they like to compare this to the tea party unfavorably shocking saying how that was more grass roots. i had to point out, there is body odor down here. >> is that the signifier of freedom? >> they didn't pay for any buses, no giant plasma screens with country stars singing in front of screens. >> authenticity stinks? >> it is dirty and rough around the edges sometimes. >> i want to talk to you about this kevin. i do think we are getting a lot of sort of tea party "occupy wall street" parallels being made, comparisons, et cetera. i do think there is a little bit of a liberal myth we tell ourselves about the tea party that says it wasn't grass roots

at all. it was completely astroturf. if you go and talk to organizers in the tea party movement, and i have talked to a lot of them, believe me. they are grassroots and they are sending out e-mails to people and getting them to come to meetings. >> they moved in just way they are on "occupy wall street." there was a tea party in london after this happened. this was not freedom works setting up protests in london. these things were spontaneous. the thing i think they have in common is that everyone thinks there is this unhealthy relationship between finance and government. the people on the right and the tea party types see it as a problem with government. the people on the left think it is a problem in the world of finance. it is a fairly broad area of agreement to work from. i think we be probably all trace this back to the bailouts, the

moment in which everybody kind of said, jesus, this doesn't work. people on the right and the left, i went, crap, we just gave money to these guys. >> are we able to say crap and or jesus christ? >> sorry. >> that die vvergence is import. i don't think the authenticity of populism is enough to celebrate. i am completely excited about what is a populous movement. i like them to deal with the jack hammers and everything they were overcoming. that division between what you see as being that troubling relationship, between the economic sector and government, i think is where the plit cat work is done. it is not we basically agree and then difficult verge. that is the whole process. >> the tea party is generally more focused on the sins of one party. it began with the ron paul

people that were discussing that george bush was spending money like lindsay lohan in amsterdam and then blaming obama for 30 years of trickle down. this is placing much more blame on the two-party system itself than being a prodemocratic uprising. >> if you go down to "occupy wall street," there are a lot of people who es spouse what i would consider conservative views. >> there is a certain kind of end the fed ron paulism. i don't think it is at the core. i got into a beef about this on twitter with will wilkinson, a great writer for the economist, defining whether this is left or right. when you talk to the protesters down there, it is not left or right. it is up or down, it is 99% versus the 1%. it is like, i have seen you before at other protests. they were left protests. >> it is clearly left. it is hard for these people to be proobama. if you are anti-wall street, it is hard to say, our guy is the

guy whose campaign was largely sponsored by goldman sachs. >> i think this is probably where my other fuddy-duddiness lies. i have such respect and sense of solidarity with the young people there and what they were doing. then, we have an election coming up. i suppose my big concern is the ways in which some of what's going on in these occupy movements, not all of it, not every person, is this sort of knee-jerk reaction against ordinary politics and against the sort of compromising realities of two-party systems. i hear you that some of it is kind of against the two-party system. we have a first majority decision-making process that will always lead to two parties. that's political science 101. that's going to lead to a two-party system. you kind of crash to the middle. the hump in the middle kind of moves to the right a little. i want to see strategy that is in part this kind of big idealism about changing processes and structures but i also want to be sure we don't

lose all of that passion for the work of doing real policy making. >> if you look at obama's presidential campaign, it was all about changing the culture of washington and finding compromise and avoiding this whole, you know, two-party dichotomy and these man akey an forces, good and evil and fighting with each other and all this dramatic stuff and then, of course, when obama has tried to come to compromise. that hasn't worked. >> we were looking at a website that showed different occupy wall street posters that had just been made. >> grassroots. >> this is the energy of the obama campaign. it reminded everybody of all the grass root culture. all that stuff that people were just coming out of the woodwork and get on youtube and play their obama folk song and show their obama images.

you are seeing, a lot of that energy being challenged in "occupy wall street." we have this amazing guest who wrote this great book. he is one of the organizers. he will be up in a little bit. my story of the week is up next. [ male announcer ] in 1894, a small town pharmacist set out to create a different kind of cold remedy using powerful medicine

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my story this week. this is what austerity looks like around the world or right here in the u.s. you may have seen the headlines out of topeka kansas when the city council voted to decriminalize domestic abuse. the move came as part of a tug of war between the city of topeka and the district attorney over who would pay for the prosecutions. facing a 10% budget cut, the district attorney said he was turning over misdemeanor prosecutions to the city. the city didn't want to pick up the slack.

18 cases went unprosecuted and the suspects released. claw dean dombrowski reacted to the news. >> i was beaten with a crowbar. that was a misdemeanor. i have had both my wrists broken. that was a misdemeanor. i have been pushed through plate glass windows and, you know, if i had not been in a relationship with this man, he would be in prison. we just jumped back 30 years into the dark ages. it is very dark. the light just went out in topeka. >> the city council tried to force the hand of the county d.n.a. to repeal the prosecutions and giving them jurisdiction and result nth headlines you saw around the country that in topeka, kansas, domestic violence was no longer a crime. the d.a. is now prosecuting the cases again but the lead prosecutors on the cases are law school interns. the news out of topeka is the most recent and shocking example of the cost of austerity at the

local level. over the past few years, we have seen stories about the increasing ways local governments are dealing with acute shortages. in newark, new jersey, government employees lost their access to toilet paper on the job. in alto, texas, a budget short fall led the down to furlough its entire police force for six months. everybody is talking about bolt your doors, buy a gun. in alameda, california, police and firemen stood by and literally watched a man drowned and a woman swim out and bring back his lifeless body, because budget constraints prevented them doing the training that would allow them legally to do water rescue. states across the country are raising tuition at the public colleges and universities. california state raised the tuition 12% in addition to 10% last year. the cuts to education are particularly galling since they amount to aiding our nation's

seed corn. on top of these cuts, there are the job we have lost and sacrificed to the vengeful austerity god. since 2008, we have lost 535,000 public sector jobs, half a million jobs. there is no reason short of idealogical opposition from conservatives that we couldn't have the federal government borough at zero percent to keep state budgets balanced and forestall these layoffs. when the banks are in trouble, the federal reserve opened a whole host of facilities for free. we thought the people in them were as important as the banks are and we could do the same for them. even though it is the fifth largest economy in the world, california is apparently not too big to fail. who, you have to ask, do the politics of austerity hurt? a topeka example illustrates the central truth of how it works in practice. when the cutbacks push down, the pillars that break first are the weakest, those that support the most marginalized and powerless

populations. no the citizens of the developing world, this is not news. developing nation ns asia, africa and south america saddled with debt were forced by the international monetary fund to adopt austerity measures to qualify for much-needed loan assistance. the programs were called structural ajudgment and more often than not, they adjusted millions of the already poor deeper into grinding poverty. according to david graver's new book it forced madagascar to cut the mosquito eradication program from the budget and 10,000 people died of malaria. this is necessary, you will hear from conservatives and even from some democrats, austerity is like a good natural forest fire. it is destructive and dangerous, sure but ultimately cleansing. the economy needs these periods of misery to clear away the underbrush and make way for rejuvenation. look across the ocean and see how they are working in britain

whose conservative government has gleefully splashed and burned services and benefits on a way to a full 10% budget cut. the end result, unploit, a 17-year high. growth is nonexistence. meanwhile, back in kansas survivors of domestic violence are told the state can't afford to prosecute the abusers. sam brownback was preparing to introduce a sweeping tax plan. this isn't brush fire. it is arson. back at the panel now. i always feel a little like stephen colbert after i walk over after doing that. i think one of the articles i was reading this morning about these global protests, a lot of it has to do with austerity, particularly in italy where there are measures being imposed and in greece. i think this fundamental dynamic is in the first chapter of austerity. what we saw was people trying to play the public sector unions off against everybody else. what i think is promising about what we are seeing on occupy

wall street is the sense of solidarity that we are in this together. do you feel like that sort of turn has been made? you don't. you frowned. >> we were talking a bit during the break about this idea of real politics around these questions of austerity. >> there are real politics. >> this is where the rubber hits the road. >> there are real politics. the assertion of we are the 99. we are no you off that. >> we are still very much on it. yeah. look, i will give you a quick exam. in occupy nola and they marched in new orleans prison down to the federal reserve, which are two really important anchors to march from orleans parish prison, well-attended and new orleans style. a brass band in our occupy movement. students talked about how important it felt to them but the work around criminal justice

reform led by friends and family of louisiana incarcerated children, those against what's been going on in new orleans parish prison, how all that has been impacted, you can't get as many people out for any forum, any discussion, any set of movements around that as you got for "occupy." that was the thing for me that really just felt so twisted, was the sense that it is not like this work hasn't been getting done. it is not like there aren't real organizations with real efforts aimed at real policy measures here. the people around the domestic violence work in topeka have been doing this work. somehow, occupy's energy is not moving that direction at least at the moment. >> just to sort of push back, i think people would say, and they say it by the financial zation of the american economy and what's happening on wall street, there are lots of people doing that work and it hasn't been working. let's try something new. in some ways, you are getting more press and more sort of energy around this.

so maybe this says something, exactly the point you made. if you can get people to many could out for the march of the prison and you couldn't get them six months ago when the salt of the earth, amazing people were working their butts off. that's like my dad. i know those people that are doing that kind of work. >> there are people who are forming new coalitions because of this movement. the footage you showed from topeka is appalling. i think chris brown picked the wrong zip code to live in. it is great to see chris brown getting off the back of dush bag ex-husbands. we are now saying we have to cut spending in america to rebuild the american economy. we didn't ever hear we have to cut spending to rebuild the iraq economy or the afghani economy? >> the other piece we are missing is that austerity measures come on both sides of the ledger. >> even in conservative britain. >> in most other developed

nations, the conservative party is not so anti-tax increases. >> sometimes the liberal party is. what's happening and being overlooked is that reality isn't optional. fiscal constraints are real. it is reality. in the 1990s, canada went flew a monetary crisis. they did it under a liberal government, with $7 in budget cuts to $1 in tax increases. if a republican came out and proposed something like that in the united states, we would all celebrate. say, yeah, that's a great plan. let's go do it. this is what the left government in canada it. they were better at making decisions about priorities. you look at a place like topeka and you say, local government has certain responsibilities. the basic one is law enforcement, protecting life, liberty and property. what are you doing and spending your money on if you are not doing that? why is beating a woman with a crowbar a misdemeanor?

>> i want to talk more about that after the break. there is a book about debt that completely changed the way i think about debt, national debt, my own debt, you name it. the guy who wrote that book is coming up next. what's going on here? hey, whats up guys? this is not how witness protection works! when we set you up with that little hardware store we didn't intend for your face to be everywhere. but fedex office makes it so easy. not only do they ship stuff, they print flyers, brochures -- everything i need to get my name out there. that's the problem. now we need to give you a third identity. you're paul matheson. and you're gonna run your business into the ground. erik gustafson would never do that! there is no erik gustafson. hey that's erik gustafson!!! there is no erik gustafson!!!!! [ male announcer ] small business solutions. fedex. solutions that matter. to bring you a low-priced medicare prescription drug plan. ♪ with the lowest national plan premium... ♪ ...and copays as low as one dollar... ♪ ...saving on medicare prescriptions is easy.

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if you are watching this program right now, even on dvr, you owe someone money, if only your cable or satellite company, not to mention student loans and credit card and mortgages. beautiful credit, the foundation of modern society. mark twain wrote, i wasn't worth a cent two years ago and now i owe $2 million. debt is everywhere in modern society, the air we breath and a crucial political issue. republicans arguing that paying off a debt is more important than paying off a job or investing in the future. all, if not a lot of what we think we know about debt is

wrong. david grafr is the author of a really nice book. he is one of the key investigators behind the "occupy wall street" movement. the first question, i cannot recommend the book high enough. it is really eye opening. it is reformulating the way i think about these issues. what's the biggest misconception we have about debt? what do we get wrong with debt? >> well, a lot of things, two things mainly. all of this is new. we have this idea, this story we all learned when we were growing up. once upon a time, there was barter and then they invent money and credit comes after that. >> so you show up. you are the farmer and you have chicken and potatoes. i want to trade chicken for potatoes. it becomes so inconvenient and inefficient, we come up with coins and then we get to start lending each other money. >> an anthropologist and historians have known for years this isn't true. there is no evidence for economies based on barter at all

anywhere. so we have this story. it ics ma us think that, well, all of this credit is this brave new world. we are living in this brave new world of virtual money where there is cashless transitions. it is sort of unnavigated territory. it is not knew. virtual credit money is the original form of money. that's what people did in mesopotamia. they didn't weigh out pieces of silver but put things on the tabs and had interest fluctuating interest rates. you make the argument in the book that the reason we invent writing essentially is to keep track of who owes who what? >> exactly. the thought that credit bubbles are not new and debt hangovers are not new is a really profound one. it does feel like we are living through this crisis. we had this great graph that we spent half of yesterday tracking down. the data is hard to find. it showed us household debt to gdp ratio.

it shows two peeks. u.s. household to gdp reaches 100% in 1999 and never reaches 100% again until 2007, on the eve of the next crash. the reason i want to show you this chart is because i think this connects to a story the tea party tells about debt that i want to get your response to. it tells a story about debt that is very appealing and about virtue. they say, when moses went up and left the israelites who turned to paganism, we had this period in the credit bubble where we lost our minds. we gave in to vice, to temptation. we went for the extra hot tub and we used our houses like atms and we all got drunk on credit. that was when we lost our virtue. now, as a period of austerity, and that means reclaiming that virtue and prudence and getting back to that moral core. that graph seems to give some credence to that story.

>> for most of us. >> what do you think about that story? >> i don't think most people in america think they have just been having a party. i think what's happened is that wages stagnated so abruptly and so drastically that people have to borough money pretty much to keep up living as they had before. >> if you look at the charts of wages and productivity, until the 70s, every time there is a raise in productivity, there is a raise in wages. since the late '70s, early '80s, that has stopped. all has been going to the 1%. >> i want to talk to you more about this book and "occupy wall street." let's take a break right now. david, i want you to stick around. we will be right back with david grafr. we will talk about debt and "occupy wall street."

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every time a local business opens its doors or creates another laptop bag or hires another employee, it's not just good for business. it's good for the entire community. at bank of america, we know the impact that local businesses have on communities. that's why we extended $7.8 billion to small businesses across the country so far this year. because the more we help them, the more we help make opportunity possible. back with david graeber, which is a page-turner, which you would not necessarily think. when you say there is nothing new under the sun, which is one

of the themes when you go to mesopotamia and the roman empire and the hung dynasty, one of the things you see in precapitalist societies is that debt builds up and there is this mechanism to deal with the fact there is too much debt and all of these people in debt slavery. how did the ancient world deal with this problem? >> there is a problem that always came up especially in periods where you have virtual credit money rather than people using cash. there is always something you have to do to make sure everything doesn't go out of hand and massive people aren't effectively enslaved to the rich. in mesopotamia, they have just done a clean slate. periodically, every new king would come in and said, all debt is canceled, start over again. that became institutionalized every seven to 49 years depending on the reading. that was one way, wipe it out and start over again. another way was simply eliminate

taking interest. that's what they did in the middle age through much of the world. >> there is this long history of an amist towards money lenders bound up with intense anti-sem met tichl. >> didn't that raise rates? they knew that debts to them could be wiped out. there was such a shortage of capital. supply and demand, it basically forced them to require higher interest rates. >> you would think so. that's what an economist would say. it didn't seem to work out that way because it was so institutionalized and also debts between merchants usually were not canceled. debts in silver. consumer loans mainly were canceled. it seems like the economic bad effects of not canceling the debt, of everybody becoming slaved to the economy grinding

to a halt for that was worse. >> so it was a way of essentially making sure you could keep the machine going. >> exactly. >> we have right now a huge debt overhang, a huge credit bubble. we are living with the remains of that and deleveraging. there are millions of americans under water on their mortgage, which means they owe more than the home is worth. the economically rational thing to do is to walk away from that mortgage, because you are essentially just giving the bank money. kevin is shaking his head. there is a case to be made that the economically rational thing to do is to walk away from that mortgage. people do not do it by and large. that has to do with the way we think about debt as a moral obligation. >> that came up over and over again when i was researching this book. the words for debt, sin, and guilt in many languages are the same word. there is this idea that

moreality is paying your debts. if you look at history, that applies to certain types of loans and not others. so that debts between rich people, they could be renegotiated. the elites can be incredibly forgiving and kind to each other. it is just when you have debts between social classes, it suddenly becomes this religious responsibility. >> people forget that the temple was charging too much interest on the poor. you speak with what mesopotamia did and hit the reset button on debt. could that be done in a society where student loan debt could get a bailout instead of the upper 1%? >> i think it would be a really good idea. >> people would start spending money get right away, which is the problem. >> on the other hand, then, credit is going to tighten up even more, right? because then they worry if we can't never collect on our

debts, how do we know this isn't going to happen again? so why should we sflend already, they are being very tight. >> i feel bad for the banks these days. >> i am not talking about the economics. >> i hear what you are saying. >> i am not talking about the economics. >> that's the argument they would make. >> he just doesn't buy it. >> they would just start all over again. what else are they going to do with their money other than lend it if the federal reserve is not bailing them out? >> they are not going to lend it to the united states. >> what has to be kept in mind is the problem with having property rights that can be abrogated by the government makes it hard to accumulate capital. if you look at the gdp for the first 1,000 years, it is flat for 1,000 years, 2000 years, 3,000 years until you get to the early 19th century and it goes up at about a 17-degree angle. >> and we discover coal. >> it is not like we suddenly learned how to make stuff.

we weren't monkeys before that. look at renaissance art and civil engineering and all the rest of it. there was a difference in the way we thought about property and economic relations. that made a huge difference to our ability to improve people's standards of living for a long period of time. >> the idea that contracts are enforceable. my point was not that these poor banks, what are they going to do? having credit available and having capital available is very important for economic growth. i talked to a lot of small businesses that are having lots of problems still getting money. if they can't get money, they can't hire. they can't invest. that sort of thing. >> we need to go to break. in my rundown here, you are supposed to go away but i want you to stay. i am going to keep you here. david graeber. we are going to be back talking to him right after this break. that's a coffee and two pills.

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i want to see more serious political conversations. >> i want corporations out and people back in. >> i want peace. >> i want the top wealthiest americans to be taxed higher and that money to go to education. >> i want economic justice. >> i want greater regulation on the markets. >> i want my kids to have a job and health care. >> i want true democracy for the 99% that don't have it anymore. that's a short film by director, david savage about "occupy wall street," who is planning to take their movement to wall street. back with david graeber ha is the author of debt the first 5,000 years. how did it start? >> it is an interesting story, because i just heard there was going to be a meeting, i believe it was, august 2nd, not that

long ago, ad busters had put out this call. >> a magazine. >> ad buster is canadian magazine of people that used to work in marketing and got sick of it and they put out this call, beautiful graphics and imagery. they hadn't done any organizing. they thought that would happen spontaneously. so i showed up august 2 right-hand, a very traditional protest group with megaphones and they were going to do a rally and a march. there was a vacuum and they felt they would fill it. i thought, not this again. we could do something better than that. i ran into some friends of mine. there was a woman from greece who had been doing some organizing there and a few other people i recognized. i said, why don't we have a real general assembly? we went over to the other side of bowling green. all the people left the other place and came over to us. the bend in the rally. we said, what are we going to

do? they called something for saturday the 17th, which, of course, you can't shut down wall street on a saturday. we had six weeks and no money. so, what can we do? we thought, well, some of the greek people, some spanish people there said, what we do, we take a square, take a place that should be public space but isn't, reclaim it, camp out and use it as a base of operations to start doing other things. i said, all right, let's work with that. >> so that was the genesis of the idea. the influence we are seeing this morning with protests happening across the world in which you have this sort of idea of protest and a format for it and it is pinging back and forth and being changed at every turn, there is is tahrir square and public squares in greece. we are seeing the chance and the format of those protests spreading around the world. i was on wikipedia boning up on the 1848 revolutions. it isn't just internet that

makes this contagion spread. 1948, you have moments of mass uprising. david graeber, author of "debt the first 5,000 years." a goldsmith, appreciate having you here. melissa will join us after this break. [ male announcer ] tom's discovering that living healthy can be fun.

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late last night -- >> late last night -- >> late last night. >> late last night. >> we received notice from the owners of zucotti park, brookfield properties that they are postponing their cleaning! >> never be defeated! the people united will never be defeated. >> that's sound from friday very

early in the morning in zuccotti park, liberty square when brookfield properties owns a private piece of land but a public park had planned to do a cleaning. there was going to be a big confrontation. people had gone down to stand in the way and sort of stare down the takeover to clean the park. they were successful. brookfield backed down. that was the crowd getting the news. you were there, right? >> i was there at 6:00 in the morning, yes. >> what was the scene like? >> much like you saw in the video. people were cheering over no cleaning. it was like my mom said, no bath tonight. in reality it wasn't necessary because they had been cleaning that park for 24 hours. i saw kids scrubbing metal garbage cans with brushes. it's the cleanest park in new york city. the virgin mary could have breakfast there. i'll be visiting l.a. and san francisco in the next week. the spirit there is evolving and changing. there really is a sense that it's not liberal versus conservative. it's aristocracy versus

democracy. i don't think it's going to look the same a year from now as it does today but the mood was jubilant down there because i think it's lose-lose for bloomberg if he want to hazle these people. this is a movement a government has to get behind, including the republicans in their debate. >> i thought it was interesting. the republicans in the beginning were extremely forceful in denouncing it as class warfare and you had a bunch of people calling it -- basically saying these are riffrafff, no gooders and then the member row -- >> misguided. >> misguide. newt gingrich had those. as editorial of national review when you look out amongst our brothers and sisters in liberty square, what do you see? >> when the republicans were calling them riffraff almost made me want to rejoin the party for a day but now they've gone soft on it, i still can't go back.

i've covered hundreds of tea party rallies and occupy wall street protests several days. if there's one thing they have in common it's group of large people standing together chanting, waving signs. it's basically creepy. i don't like being around those groups even if they're on my side, allegedly on my side or whatever. >> but isn't that -- >> well, the republicans are going to make all sorts of hay about this. you have pictures of guys defecating on the american flag. if i'm a republican evil campaign strategist, that's my ad. it's like here's the left, these are obama's people. totally unfair but that's what i would do. >> let me throw to this poll real quick because what's remarkable is so far that message is not what the mass of people are getting. "time" did a poll. 54% had a favorable opinion of occupy wall street. 23% have a favorable opinion of the tea party. >> at one time 70% of the people

identified with the tea party. they have a level of progression. >> that will be interesting to see. john lewis, one of the front lines of the civil rights movement in the '60s we'll talk to him about tomorrow the dedication of the martin luther king memorial and today's civil disobedience. drug plan. ♪ with the lowest national plan premium... ♪ ...and copays as low as one dollar... ♪ ...saving on medicare prescriptions is easy. ♪ so you're free to focus on the things that really matter. call humana at 1-800-808-4003. or go to walmart.com for details. whose non-stop day starts with back pain... and a choice. take advil now and maybe up to four in a day. or choose aleve and two pills for a day free of pain. way to go, coach. ♪

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"the new york times," john, jack of all trade. john is a repeat guest on "up" a veteran. i'm really interested in the herman cain phenomenon this week. getting a lot of cain coverage. part of what's interesting about it is if there's one thing we know about republicans, the rock

bottom core of the modern republican party, is they always want lower taxes, right? that is the grove norquist no new taxes pledge, george h.w. bush lost in '88 because he lost because he said, read my lips, no new taxes and then he raised taxes. in the campaign of cain is that republicans want higher taxes on the poor and the middle class. >> in fairness, 81% of the population does want the rich to pay higher taxes. that has to include some republicans. >> right. an extremely popular position. what's happened, the flipside of that, flipside argument, so the 89% tumbler and now the premise is to channel resentment and angst of 47% of americans not earning enough money to pay federal income taxes although they are pay payroll taxes. those who aren't are largely very old, very poor and disabled. and then there's -- >> and sales tax.

>> and then the herman cain sales tax, the current republican front-runner, his 9-9-9 plan is sort of not a plan but a slogan because there's no policy paper on it. based on what cain has said about the idea so far, here's what we know. i'll let you jump in. for a family earning $50,000 a year experts estimate their taxes will double. for a family earning $120,000 their taxes will increase $8,000 a year. above that, the richest 8% or so will see taxes cut in some cases by a considerable amount. regresses ive redistribution. this is remarkable. it really is leading out there and saying, we to want tax the poor. is this now the republican message? >> yeah. this sort of 53% rhetoric is particularly bone-headed. it doesn't take into account payroll taxes. what it ignores is the poor not only pay a lot of taxes they pay high taxes. if you're a wealthy middle class homeowner you write off your mortgage interest, all that. if you're poor you live in

rented property which means you're paying your landlord's taxes. it's dumb rhetoric. as one of the odd right-wingers who's bradley in favor of tax increases, we're not going to cut 42% of spending, it's not going to happen i'm okay with raising taxes on those who aren't paying but a different program, broad-based, low rate broad-based reform. >> i think the impulse is different. i don't think the cain 9-9-9 plan is now republicans are on board with taxing poor and low class people. >> okay. >> i think it's about this discourse around simplicity versus the idea that these other people are going to try to sell you something that is too complicated. if it's complicated, it must necessarily be bad and evil. so, what i'm going to sell you is simplicity, purely for simplicity's sake. not about fairness, not about reasonableness but just because you can understand 9-9-9. it's this thing going on ever since the primaries, 2008

primaries with then-senator obama and senator clinton, this idea that somehow if you're really smart and competent and capable and talking about how complex the economic and political systems are and how difficult our problems are, then that is elitism. >> we've seen also -- it was a huge thing in the affordable care act, right? whatever you think about the affordable care act, you can hate, it love it, come somewhere between, one of the major critiques on the right was that its length, it was 2,000 pages. they would plunk it down. it was sort -- >> as opposed to the patriot act. >> right. >> there is value in simplicity. think about all the resources that are wasted. i can say that because i come from a long line of accountants. in preparing taxes every year and the beneficiaries of complicated tax codes are by and large wealthier corporations. >> and h&r block which can do their refund advance.

>> 100,000 people in their tax drngts you know. >> but i would say, it goes a bit to our point about populism. simplicity absolutely has value, particularly elegance. simplicity having a fall is not the same thing as valuing something because it is simplistic. >> i want to -- i think there's something more than the campaign. i want to play this michele bachmann sound because i think this 43%, who carries the water and drinks the water is central right now. do we have that bachmann? >> we know 53% of americans pay income taxes to the federal government and 47% don't. i think we need to definitely change the tax code. we need to get it more in line because everyone benefit from this magnificent country. everyone should pay something. >> so, you see this kind of -- this is an old pop list idea of producerism, right, the producers, the people are productive in society and people who just -- >> leeches. >> the leeches. they draw off. when that famous -- yes?

>> i'm going to get so much hate mail for me but i think that's racism. >> no. >> i think that is 2011 version of the welfare queen. >> yep. >> and it it's just a way of saying -- and not racism like they're calling somebody a name but that what that is meant to imply, what that's meant to suggest is there's this whole group dependent. the fact since we developed this language that the dependent groups are these illegal immigrants and these unworking, unmarried poor black women who are welfare queens and the criminal types, i mean, it's just a way of evoking all of these scary racial lies and poor others in a way that allows us to separate this notion of hard working tax-paying americans from, for example, refugee. >> so much -- >> it's broadly true. >> what's that? >> in the sense that if you look at people who are dependent class they do tend to be poor, married unyoung woman -- >> depends on what you mean by -- >> no. >> there are a -- >> wait, wait, wait.

>> in my world child care is productive labor. >> let me make this point, is that the mortgage tax deduction is a form of addition i -- i mean -- >> of course it is. >> if the government -- >> we're talking about transfer payments, most go to the middle class. we have a giant welfare stake in the middle class which why we have a weird, unproductive -- >> don't you also feel like -- i do feel like there's some racial coding imbedded in that but the amount has declined over my time watching american politics which is to say --. it's much more institutionalized and ingrained and not question. this gives lie to the tax code argument because 47% aren't paying taxes because of tax subsidies. >> when there was an interesting book that came out recently called "the submerged state" about how invisible a lot of government support programs are. and the professor who put this together relied on some survey data where she asked people, you know, do you benefit from

government services. i don't remember the exact percentages but the vast majority said no. she also asked -- >> freaks and -- >> well, no, not that. do you receive medicare, do you receive social security, you know, did you take a mortgage interest -- mortgage interest tax deduction, you know, things like that. things that are imbedded in the tax code and in spending programs that people benefit from. but they don't think of as -- >> but we've spent a generation pretending social security is an investment program and not a welfare program. you know, we spent all this time pretending medicare is an insurance system and not a welfare program. so, i think it's natural that people think of things that way. >> what does welfare mean? welfare only means something because it means something politically. >> it's a think they put in the preamble. >> it wasn't a dirty word back then. >> that's right. when we say welfare, that is a coded term. on the one hand -- >> don't we mean transfer payments? >> very different than welfare.

>> that's right. we don't seem to mean that when we say it as a matter of politics. if we just said transfer payments in the context of politics that would not evoke the same sorts of things. i hear thaw it does feel like it's less overtly racialized but i think that's in part because it's been so effectively racialized. you don't have to do willie horton anymore, you can say crime and crime is sufficient to effect it. >> racism institutionalize bigotry is in your face. >> there's been research down on attitude of race. you ask american public, how likely do you think a black american is to be on welfare? how more likely for a black woman to have a child out of wedlock than white? they thi if we have stereotypes our stereotypes are actually, you know, toward the positive side versus -- >> you've done a lot of work,

impir ci empirical attitudes on -- >> the work of marty gillens, their work would should something different. the angst and anxiety against these transfer payments can be directly context you'llized in understanding race as the base on which these payments are happening. again, i don't think race is the all-inclusive totalizing hans to american politics. i think that idea there's a group of us who are paying for the other group, and it's not just about african-americans. by the way, i think the anti-immigration angst that emerges at the same time, protecting the borders, all of that is about a set of demographic anxieties that are also about a browning of america. >> i think that actually -- that's where you see it -- that's where i see it in its most potent form because you see the complaint -- the thing that has destroyed rick perry's candidacy in some cases. really, that is the thing that

has destroyed -- >> it's not hard enough. >> >> it's not necessarily about -- very specific immigration policy and the notion of $100,000 subsidy because you're paying in-state tuition. as if rick perry is walking around in mcallen, texas, handing the checks. >> you know there's a lot of universities in texas. most of the illegal immigrants are not students at university of texas-austin. they're at utep and places like that. the difference is not that huge. i mean, this is the dumbest thing for people to get mad about. when have you people living in the united states for virtually their entire lives, went to an american high school, they've been there for years, graduated from it and enroll in school in the same state, i mean, the amount of paperwork necessary to do just -- just screen everyone

for immigration status would cost you more than you're losing. of course, your tuition at the university of texas only covers 22% of the cost of education. >> rick perry should go back in time and make that argument at the debate. >> this goes back to topeka. we figured out -- someone did a study of university of faculty and we spend 90% of the money getting 30% of the teaching done. if you made a more rational use of resources you would get rid of tuition, period. >> so, i do feel -- i want to are a college professor moment on that one just on sort of the idea that teaching is primarily what universities are up to. that's part of it but also other research. >> this accounts for research. they bring in zero dollars for research funds. >> go back to perry. >> so sorry. just on the point about perry and this idea -- i mean, i also want to remind us that that moment when joe wilson yells at the president, "you lie" a lot of people read that as this

bigotry moment, yells at african-american president and this represents old fashioned bigotry. i want to remind us that when that happened, what the president had just said was, don't worry when we pass health care reform, we will not allow undocumented workers, so-called illegal ail yens, to be part of it. >> we'll make sure they die in the street. >> right. so this language "you lie" was not -- >> it was bigotry 2.0. >> about this connection of a black president and also the question of resources and immigration. >> what would the civil rights leader of the 1960s think about a world in which we have a leading black presidential candidate on the republican side looking to raise taxes on the poor? we'll talk to congressman john lewis after this. ♪ [ cellphone rings ] cut! [ monica ] i have a small part in a big movie. i thought we'd be on location for 3 days, it's been 3 weeks. s so, i used my citi simplicity card to pick up a few things.

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we'll get to representative john lewis in a second. i want to get to the fact check. you were talking about the defecation flag incident. a very astute twitter person, we tracked this down, it was a 2007, march 23, 2007 incident. >> there was defecation on a police car. >> let's be clear. >> that wasn't -- >> that's detail -- the best detail in the march 2007 thing is that the scene of the -- the defecation was not on a flag but a burning flag which makes me wonder if he was trying to put it out. we have now corrected that. i'm not going to be able to pull off this segue with anywhere near the grace i should. >> i didn't say it was accurate. i said it would be make a good campaign. >> well played. congressman lewis put his life in the line fighting jim crow south, chairman of snic, national leader of civil rights community, a close colleague of

martin luther king jr. and organizer of march on washington 1963 while in his early 20s. nancy pelosi called him the conscience of the congress for his moral and ethical leadership and tomorrow he speaks at dedication of the martin luther king jr. memorial in washington, d.c. fight for equality in america continues as the occupy wall street movement takes root around the country and around the world. congressman, good morning. thank you for joining us this morning. i appreciate it. >> good morning. i'm delighted and grateful for you inviting me to be here this morning. >> congressman, we were doing some coverage this morning about the spread of the sort of occupy protest movements around the world. 951 cities. you're someone who really experienced what doing grass roots direct action is in the most intimate way possible. all the difficulties that come with it. what do you make of this as you see this kind of -- this kind of politics happening throughout the country and the world?

>> well, for some time, there have been a growing movement in america and around the world that's grown discontent. people are frustrated so they are venting their feeling, standing up, speaking up and speaking out. they're using their bodies. they're using everything they have the same way we did during the '60s. their putting their bodies on the line to dramatize to the largest part of society, that they're not happy, they're not satisfied and they want to see government and they want to see the business community humanized. >> i want to talk to you a bit about the memorial that will be dedicated tomorrow but i want to ask you one more question on this topic while i have you here. there was a video of you trying to speak to occupy protesters in atlanta. it made the round. it got a lot of play on the

internet. i want to get you to weigh in afterward. here's the tape we have. >>. >> we have someone here who would like to address the assembly. that person is congressman john lewis. how do we feel about congressman john lewis addressing the assembly at this time? are there any bucks? there's a buck here. the point of the general assembly, the democratic process is not seeking a human being is apparently more valuable than any other human being.

>> these are likely that we're going to come to consensus quickly. therefore, i propose that we continue with the agenda. >> thanks for bearing with me through that, congressman. they decided to let you speak just not at that moment after they got through the agenda. it was viewed as a snub. the folks with me are shaking their head. what was your reaction to that moment? because it has gotten so much attention. >> well, i didn't feel that i was denied the right to speak. i couldn't stay around for 45 minutes or to an hour to speak. i had another engagement. and i had to be there on time.

this is the essence of democracy. we did similar things during the early days of the civil rights movement, essenti we tried to r consensus and people had to work through. i understood it very well. i was not offended. since then they have invited me to speak. in any time. but i'm here in washington, and i don't plan to be back in atlanta for a few days. >> congressman, they're going to dedicate this memorial, that was postponed by hurricane irene, and what do you think the significance of having a physical memorial to dr. king on the mall is? >> i think it's fitting and appropriate that the likeness of martin luther king jr. be placed on the front door of america, on

the front porch of america. martin luther king jr. must be looked up on as one of the founding fathers of the new america. for he helped not just liberate a people, but he freed a nation. it's almost unbelievable. it's almost unreal to see the likeness of martin luther king jr. standing between president jefferson and president lincoln. and i will never forget 48 years ago when i stood with dr. king when he said, i have a dream today. a dream in keeping with the american dream. and for generation to come, hundreds, thousands and millions of people from all over the world will come and pay homage to martin luther king jr. and to what he stood for. this man of peace, this man of love, this man of nonviolence, it's -- it's going to mean so

much to all of us who participate tomorrow, but to people around the country and around the world who will be watching. >> congressman, i want to see if you can stick around. we have to go to break now but i have some folks who want to ask you questions. we want to discuss more about dr. king's legacy. if you don't mind staying put, we'll come right back. companies you're just a policy. at aviva, we're bringing humanity back to insurance and putting people before policies.

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incarceration rates are higher, foreclosure rates are higher. it's a very difficult time for african-americans in this country economically and yet at the same time there's this amazing progress symbolizing the percentage of barack obama. how do you feel about that tension? >> in spite of all the difficulties we may face as a nation and as a people, you cannot deny the fact that we've made so much progress. just think a few short years ago, when we marched on washington, when we went on the freedom ride, when we participated in the sit-in, when we marched to montgomery, many people could not register to vote simply because of the color of their skin. and many of the 11 states of the old confederacy, from virginia to texas. we saw those signs that said, white men, colored men, the signs are gone. and they will not return. the only place our young people

will see those signs will be in a book, in a museum or on a video. with the election of barack obama and now with herman cain running and leading in the polls, that's progress. that is progress. that cannot be denied. but we have to say to america that the election of president barack obama is not the fulfillment of dr. king's dream. it's only a down payment. we still have a great distance to go. the scars and stain of racism are still deeply embedded in american society. too many people still left out and left behind. and they're not just african-american. but their low income clients, latino, asian american and native american. >> congressman, melissa harry-perry, professor at tulane and contributor of msnbc. she wanted to ask you a question. >> it's a pleasure to have an

opportunity to ask you this question. i wanted to ask about the design of the dr. king memorial itself. you know, given that your background is actually in snic and parts of the civil rights movement that was a challenge that was a critique as well as support of dr. king, i'm wondering about the decision to have only king there. i mean, i wonder if there's a way in which by honoring king, which is right to do, we also somehow silence all of these other important voices that were part of the civil rights movement, that king himself as a leader is standing on the shoulders of men and of women and of people who were both supporters and critics. is there anything you think at all that is lost in this kind of great man strategy of remembering the civil rights movement? >> dr. martin luther king jr. emerged as the symbol, as the leader, as the personification, the embodiment of the movement.

but martin luther king jr. always gave credit to what he called the ground crew, the people working on the ground. the fieldworkers. those nameless and voiceless individuals. people who took part in the sit-ins, who went on the freedom ride, the people that did the nitty gritty work. the people that were beaten and jailed and so many that was killed. this is only the beginning of a long struggle to complete what dr. king and others would call the revolution of 1776. >> congressman, i have john fug here. >> it's a pleasure. when i group up i always believed at the time of dr. king's death, the civil rights struggle was a part of

what he was fighting for, of equal measure to nonviolence and organized labor. people forget he was in memphis when he died for sanitation worker strike. do you feel those elements of his legacy have been tragically overlooked? when we discuss dr. king, it always focuses on civil rights and equality for afric african-americans and today's people forget about his struggle against violence and militarism and working people. >> we must never forget that. dr. king spoke out against violence. he spoke out against our involvement in wars and conflict abroad. one of the great speeches, and i think his best and finest speech was the speech he gave on april 4, 1967 at riverside church, when he spoke out against the war in vietnam. if he could speak to us today, he would tell us, he would tell the president to end the wars, bring our young men and women home and use our resources not

for bombs and guns and missiles but to educate our children, take care of or seniors, protect the environment provide health care for everybody and put people back to work. when we march on washington on august 28, 1963, it was a march for jobs and freedom. when dr. king died in memphis, he died for fighting for sanitation workers. he was in the process of organizing the poor people's campaign, coming to washington to put on the american agenda the problem of poverty, hunger and unemployment. >> congressman john lewis, representative from georgia and veteran of the civil rights movement, a colleague of dr. king's from student nonviolent coordinating committee, thank you so much. it was a pleasure to have you. you'll be speaking tomorrow at the dedication of the martin luther king jr. memorial which we'll be giving special coverage

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one pill a day. twenty-four hours. zero heartburn. no heartburn in the first place. great. some of the big names on tomorrow sunday talkers include former minnesota governor and former presidential candidate tim pawlenty is probably kicking himself he's not in the race, eric cantor and obama campaign adviser, david axelrod. herman cain and newt gingrich are making the rounds. this is when we play dress-up, as i like to call it. if you had a question to ask one of the guests on the sunday talk shows, kevin williamson, who would you ask what to? >> i would ask the presidential candidates this. real median incomes for american men of men peaked in 1970, a long, long time ago. they've been declining in real terms since then.

the only reason median incomes have gone up is because women are in the work force. why? >> that's a great question and you would get interesting answers. >> there's one right answer but they won't get it. >> tell them wrong. melissa? >> my question would be for bobby jindal. >> of louisiana. >> of louisiana. that's right. and my question would be, governor jindal, you turned down a key component of the stimulus package that would have funded light rail transportation in southeast louisiana. that part of the state is now -- continues to struggle financially. some businesses that have left have cited a transportation problem. and in part, so do you regret having turned that money down? and then in a broader sense, when we look at republican states, you often have lower educational achievement, poorer communities. how can these republicans with these policies continue to claim to be good for southern states? >> yeah. this is particularly -- i mean,

the poorness you refer, to the lower education levels, is really a problem of the south. >> yes. >> that's where the correlation happens. in the south you have republican governors and also very poor populations and we've seen this rejection of recovery money. although there's also rejection of recovery money -- >> and some taking it around the back. katherine, what would you ask to whom? >> i would want to talk with cain about the details of his tax policy. >> 9-9-9? >> 9-9-9. >> take a break. >> i come from a long line of accountants so i'm interested in this. it's been held up as this great model of simplicity but i would wonder why does he have all of these different phases going into it. if the fair tax, the final phase, is the best policy, why not start out with that? and then i'd also wonder about specifically the 9-9-9 piece of it, which is the intermediate step, why tax corporations on

their gross revenues rather than profits? if you're taxing them based on revenues which we don't currently do, which means they can't deduct wages. wouldn't that discourage companies from hiring? >> that's a very good question from catherine. john, just a few short seconds. >> well, i would ask liz cheney if she'd be my date to the sexy liberal comedy tour playing austin 12th of november. newt gingrich converted from the catholic family. i come from a very catholic family. i would say, why do you continue to sport a guy who hangs around with lepers, hookers, krooction, wasn't american, anticapitalism, antiwealth, antideath penalty but never antigay, never mentioned abortion and a long-haired, brown skinz skin, homeless middle eastern jew. of course i'm talking about jesus.

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usually use this time to run updates or corrections on what i said last week. this week we have something different to take care of. our first order of business. last week i discussed the robo signing scandal with bo biden. the basics of the scandal are that banks lost track of the documents that showed they owned homes, they wanted to foreclose close on so they signed a bunch of affidavits saying they had the papers somewhere and went ahead with the foreclosures anyway. they were processing so many without documentation they had to hire people who would spend all day, day after day, just signing affidavit after affidavit. i suggested in my interview with biden the documents were signed by machines, hence, rob signing, but they weren't. it was real live human being paid low wages to sit in a room and sign documents over and over and over. now our other order of business. which is an update on what someone else said about what i

said. i was a little surprised, not to mention bemused, when i saw the new blockbuster that the rick perry campaign put out this week. >> time and again the white house has pointed to the massachusetts law as the model for its obama care. >> yes, that is yours truly applying the obama death hug to minute romney. did you see how it seems i refer to health care reform? watch again. >> time and again the white house has pointed to the massachusetts law as the model for its obama care. >> catch that. obama care? i thought that was odd because i don't usually go around reefing to the patient protection and affordable care act as obama care. we went back to the tape. it was april 12th when i was subing for lawrence on "the last word and this is what i said. >> time and again as the model for its own affordable care act, better known to republican primary voters as the dread obama care. >> looks like my is snark was

left on the cutting room floor. we're believers in "up" so we will not begrudge the perry folks doing snipping. we don't to want play favorites so we offer free footage to other contestants in the gop nomination battle who might to want use their words against their opponents, too. ready? hit record, guys. one, rick perry's decision to let illegal immigrants in texas pay in state tuition was compassion at, just and humane as a kind of program liberals love. number two, michele bachmann is right, i chris hayes of msnbc applaud her for taking it up. minute romney's shift of opinion show a willingness to acknowledge. and number four, if i had to choose a single republican candidate on the basis of his or her foreign policy, i chris hayes of msnbc, would be very comfortable with president ron paul. that's it. in just a second i'll tell you what i didn't know when the week

began. right now it's time for a preview of "weekends with alex witt". >> i'm going to hang it up. that was huge. let's go with a surprise move from the obama administration. one key component to the health care law is being dropped. democrats say they'll fight to save it. we'll talk about political impact. going global, we'll take you live to new york and london where the occupy wall street protests are escalating and the situation is tense there. also the silent majority, is there an america out there that has a different take on politics? a new article suggests that is exactly the case. we'll examine that at the top of the hour. chris, back to you. >> thanks. so, what do we know now we didn't know last week? we now know rush limbaugh thinks mitt romney isn't a conservative. we're going to find out just how many of a veto mr. limbaugh has over republican field. we know perry is so indifferent to climateologist they edited a report to revens to rising sea

levels. he know as powerful as the governor of texas thinks he is, the sea levels will rise whether or not his lackeys allow the simple fact to be stated. we know the cost of austerity are borne by the most powerless, underrepresented communities like the women of topeka, kansas. the wake of attempted underwear bomber pleading guilty, we now know 9/11 didn't change everything. our criminal justice system was perfectly capable of meting out justice to terrorists and remains so today. we know herman cain's economic adviser is a cpa in cleveland, not an economist, and that his 9-9-9 tax plan bears a striking similarity to the default tax setting in the video game sim city. he denies it saying for those saying it's modeled after a game, it's a lie. we know here in the real world, cain's proposal would amount to an unprecedented massive downward shift on to poor and working class people and we know conservatives see this as a feature, not a bug.

a way to make sure the bottom 40% have some in the game you. john mccain's right wing to ail chemy is total he was willing to go on fox news and say this. >> we would love to see, for example, a vote in the united states senate on a moratorium on federal regulations coming out in the thousands, costing businesses billions and jobs. >> billions of jobs with a "b." we remind you how deeply revealed john mccain isn't president. congressman john lewis has no ill will for not allowing him to speak at occupy wall street. we also know fox news and rush limbaugh and karl rove will be working overtime to make sure that doesn't last. after brookfield properties changed their mind at the last minute and decided to postpone

cleaning zuccotti park, we know that the people united will not be defeated, at last for now. we know the occupy wall street protesters are the wonkiest protesters in history evidenced by this awesome sign. we used the same data for our graphic. it's accurate. telling the most basic facts about who gets what in our economy is the most radical message of all. coming with my guest, what they know now they didn't know. [ male announcer ] this is coach parker...

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we have news from london where itv news reporting several protesters in the protests in london, the occupy london protests, have been arrested as they laid down in front of police vehicles. i think alex will have more about that in the hour to come. i want to find out what my guests know right now that they did not know when the week began, so i will start with kevin williamson of the national

review. >> i know in 2010 congress passed an authorization against this if africa authorizing us to invade every country in africa. unfortunately, i learned this on live television. didn't know about it. so, we're now -- now we're in congo, uganda. there may be some countries we're not authorized to invade but i don't know which ones they are. >> awe announced yesterday we sent 100 special troops in training to fight the very strange and sort of awful terrifying group of people. but point being we have u.s. ground troops on the ground in congo. melissa harry-perry, what do you now know? >> i knew this but i was reminded this week of how difficult it is to be a woman in kansas, both the violence laws we talked about earlier in the program, but also because former attorney general klein has been -- there's a panel

recommendation he be disbarred, no longer allowed to practice because of his activism over reproductive rights. >> dorothy had a problem in kansas, too. >> that's true. catherine, what do you now know? >> well, there was a report that came out from the new york state comptroller's office on bankers' salaries and compensation. it said in 30 -- 30 years ago the typical banker in new york earned twice as much as everybody else in new york. new york city. today it's 5 1/2 times the typical -- >> the median -- >> this is the average. >> the average banker wage is 5 1/2 times the nonbanker wage? >> just in new york city. just in new york city. that doesn't include bonuses or -- >> oh, wow. >> capital gains. i mean, it gives addition yeah, it gives you a sense of occupy wall street. >> john, what do you now know? >> i learned from the depate. i learned tea party is acronym to embarrassing to admit

politics or theirs? yes. her m cain may be the first black man to get another black man re-elected. if you're going to have a drinking game watching a gop debate, don't have the word be bush, gop, middle class you'll be the sober guy. however if your drinking word is 9-9-9 you'll be in an alcoholic coma. >> thank you, all of you. you were fantastic. coming up next is "weekends with alex witt," join us sunday morning at 8:00 covering the dedication of the martin luther king jr. with help from melissa, bob herbert and congress mann steve cohn. you can follow us on twitter. thanks for getting up. at adt, we get financing from ge capital.

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