msnbc contributor alex wagner, thank you very much for joining me tonight. >> thanks, lawrence. >> have the last word online at our blog lastword.msnbc.com and follow tweets @lawrence. the rachel maddow show is up next. good evening, rachel. good evening, lawrence. thanks so much. thanks for staying with us the next hour. where i live in western massachusetts, north hampton, had a great town asset in the form of pleasant street video store, a mom and pop movie rental store with a genius staff and an incredible selection of all the greats. old movies, rare movies, cult movies, foreign movies, hard to find stuff. the whole staff understood it all and could talk you through it. it was a one of a kind place, a great resource. but then i mean you know where this is going, right?

about four months ago, pleasant street announced they were closing up shop. our little movie rental shop that could no longer compete with the new online world of movie rentals. instead of just shutting down, the good, good, good people at pleasant street video in north hampton, massachusetts, did something cool. they decided they wanted to stay an asset to the town of north hampton, mass, even as they were going out of business. so pleasant street figured out a way for an $8 donation, anybody could effectively adopt one of the movies from the store's collection and then that movie would be housed forever at the public library in town. it was kind of a weird idea but totally worked. the town stepped up. every single movie at pleasant street video store got adopted. some people picked just their favorite movie or all the movies by their favorite director like the james bond movies or whatever. you chose the movies you wanted to adopt. instead of pleasant street video existing as a business and its amazing film collection being a relic in our collective imaginations now that the business is gone, thanks to this

smart idea, pleasant street's entire dvd collection, 8,000 films in all will permanently be kept at north hampton's forbes library where anybody can rent them for free forever. people ask me why i live in western massachusetts. that's right. now you know. that's how we roll. i'm proud of what pleasant street did though i'm sad to miss the business. independent video stores like that have slowly gone away in this country because of online competition because of companies like netflix which allows you to even stream videos online, blockbuster video before that. blockbuster it should be noted nearly went the way of pleasant street video back in the year 2000 as a result of a disaster of a deal they decided to make with a texas company. a texas company that was ostensibly an energy company but it was an energy company that had its mitts on a whole lot of different things that had absolutely nothing to do with energy. under the deal blockbuster partnered with this energy company and signed a 20 year deal that would allow people to have access to movies on their

personal computers or on their tvs instead of coming into the store. while that may sound like an awesome idea now, technologically speaking, back in the year 2000, it was not an awesome idea. it never even got past what's called the test stage. it did not work. it was a bust. blockbuster video ultimately pulled out of that deal and the texas energy company that was their partner in that deal was forced to face up to that massive failure. if forced to face up to that massive failure by recording it in their books as a $111 million profit. profit? they called it a profit. this deal that did not work. how could they possibly call a deal that went bust $111 million profit? it's a good question, but they did it. the company in question was enron, one of the biggest players in the american energy industry and a bigger player in the city of houston, texas, where they were headquartered. right around the time enron made that weird deal with blockbuster, they also signed a $100 million deal to have their name plastered all over the

houston astros new baseball stadium. enron had that money to throw around because they were awash in what they declared to be massive profits. after the deregulation of the markets throughout the 1990s and in particular the deregulation of anything related to the energy markets, enron went on a four years of what looked like astounding corporate success, increased sales of 750%. that astounding corporate success it turned out was actually the result of astounding corporate lying. business deals where nothing was traded to no one for no purpose, enron would write those down as million-dollar deals. for deals that have risk in them by design or the nature of the deal, enron would form itself into the company that would not only do the deal but be the company that benefited when the deal didn't work. they were essentially a criminal enterprise in which their ostensible business was mostly being done through accounting tricks.

enron's accountant, arthur anderson, ceased to exist as one of the world's largest accounting firms because of the magnitude of the enron disaster. the problem wasn't that the accountants were helping hide their scams. the bigger problem was that the scams in some part were legal. valuing that disastrous blockbuster deal as $111 million profit, that was thanks to the accounting tricks legalized by deregulating wall street to make financial transactions more profitable. wall street firms did that thing all the time. the only innovation with enron is enron wasn't a wall street firm. they were supposed to be an energy firm that for some reason was doing, you know, home video deals and any other kind of deal they could get their mitts on. when enron collapsed at the end of 2001, the scale of the scandal was unprecedented in american business history. >> the extent of the devastation is still mind-boggling. enron was the seventh largest

corporation in the country when it collapsed. wiping out $63 billion in shareholder value. putting 27,000 people out of work. its glass tower and crooked "e" leaving an indelible mark on houston, enron's hometown and site of the trial. >> not only was the collapse a personal disaster for the individual people who worked there who lost everything, it was also a huge political disaster for the george w. bush administration. enron's founder and ceo was one of george w. bush's biggest political donors. enron, itself, was for a time george w. bush's top career donor. when dick cheney was crafting the nation's energy policy behind closed doors in 2001, enron officials were in the room. at the height of enron's collapse, the white house was forced to acknowledge that president bush's senior adviser karl rove owned nearly a quarter of a million dollars in enron's stock. more than a dozen other bush administration officials also owned stock in the company as it went down. enron officials were personally

calling bush administration officials as it was becoming clear that the company was in trouble. because of all those ties, the enron scandal was set to be a huge political scandal for the new president bush. it probably would have been the defining scandal of the first bush term had 9/11 not happened a month after enron started to fall apart. the fix for the enron problem came in the form of a new law passed by congress called the sarbanes-oxley act. that new law mostly changed the rules about how corporations kept their books and how accounting firms should be independent from the companies they are employed by. enron goes away. arthur anderson goes away. there's a tightening of the rules so at least there's not going to be another arthur anderson situation. wall street essentially keeps playing by the same rules enron had been playing by in the years leading up to their collapse. things like declaring something has value because of the fact you traded it even if the only entity to which you traded it was another part of yourself. ta-da!

and in 2008, of course, with all those shenanigans going on, we ended up having a collapse of the only scale that could dwarf the enron scandal. one created entirely on wall street by possibly criminal and very at least negligent reckless behavior by totally deregulated financial institutions. instead of the embarrassment of enron field this time, it was the embarrassment of citi field. its multizillion dollar profits off of playing casino with sham mortgages on houses like these, playing casino of the lives of the families who once lived in these homes. in the midst of that collapse in 2008, a presidential election was held in a democratic house and a democratic senate and democratic president were all elected. despite great gnashing of teeth by the republicans, the democrats did manage to pass a fair package of new regulations on wall street called dodd/frank. i say fair to middling because it could have been a lot tougher than it was. they probably could have nationalized the banks and maybe

they ought to have. what they passed is some constraints on the worst behaviors that got us into the crash of 2008, that got us to where we are now as a country. now just three years later we are poised to have yet another presidential election season and the candidates vying to be the republican nominee are competing with one another to see who can roll back the new rules on wall street the farthest and the fastest. >> i know we can do so much better in this country. that's why i'm the chief author to repeal dodd/frank. >> we can't go forward with dodd/frank. >> repeal dodd/frank. >> dodd/frank obviously is a disaster. sarbanes-oxley which was done by the republicans, it cost $1 trillion, too. let's repeal that, too. >> i'm shocked the house republicans haven't repealed dodd/frank. ought to do it now and repeal sarbanes-oxley now. >> dodd/frank, come on, who needs it? 2008 wasn't so bad sarbanes-oxley, we don't need that either, we're good.

republican front-runner, himself, mitt romney proposed repealing dodd/frank and proposed modifying those post-enron rules, the sarbanes-oxley act. president obama and democrats are trying to make this next election season, the president's re-election effort about the republican position on wall street. mr. obama hammering home in almost every speech now the republican position, the republican plan is to hand the keys back to wall street and let them start driving the country again. >> their plan says we need to go back to the good old days before the financial crisis when wall street wrote its own rules. their plan says, let's go back and let wall street do exactly what they were doing before the financial crisis. let's roll back all the wall street reforms that we fought tooth and nail to pass over the objections of lobbyists and special interests in washington. >> what the president says there

is true, but he could say more. because republicans now just don't want to go back to the rules we had when we got the 2008 disaster. republicans want to go back to the rules we had before we got the disaster before that. they want to go back to the rules we had even when we got enron. joining us now is "washington post" columnist and msnbc contributor ezra klein. ezra, thanks very much for your time tonight. nice to have you here. >> good evening. >> i have not seen republicans this united and excited about anything since rallying to extend tax breaks to zillionaires. why the sudden push, the sudden enthusiasm about not repealing dodd/frank but maybe even sarbanes-oxley? >> you know, i take it as a generalized world view that isn't even just about financial regulation. a move in the republican party saying what's gone wrong in the party the last couple years and before that, before the crisis and the obama years is government, anything in general the democrats did. so in another part of that

bachmann clip she said the financial crisis was not wall street's fault, it was government's fault, it was fannie mae and freddie mac, the effort to expand home owning into minority and low income communities. so the answer in all things in all ways has been to repeal whatever government has done, whatever they have done lately because people are more interested in repealing new things. repeal health care reform but never say how you'll replace it exactly. repeal dodd/frank, don't say how you'll replace it or if you will repeal sarbane-oxley. repeal it all. >> this comes out of a feeling government can't do anything right so anything government has done must be undone. i get that part of it. i also wonder if this is one of those things where there's a set of facts were republicanland, where deregulation created no trouble at all on wall street, where deregulation has never been trouble, and one for the rest of the world but we recognize that there being no

rules about these plainly stupid things happening at enron and on wall street, where these things were actually a problem. >> absolutely. and it has become the gap between the two world views has become real striking. remember the financial crisis inquiry commission trying to find out like the 9/11 commission did, why did this happen? the idea was we could settle on a single set of facts and come up with a response that took those into account. every republican decanted. republicans didn't want the regulation to go forward. so there's been a sense in which republicans have had a series of preferred outcomes and worked backwards to find the story that fit them. in some ways that's a little dangerous. i think even dangerous for the republican party. you get the sense listening to those debates where they don't

say what president obama did with dodd/frank did not sufficiently regulate wall street and we're going to go and do a better job. they just want to repeal it. they've actually not done the hard thinking. a lot of what obama did isn't popular. there's a good reason to think it's not the wrong thing. might want to do wall street reform differently and health care differently. the american people remember 3 1/2 years ago. the status quo was not good. it did not work for the country. >> to be bringing -- that's the amazing part of this. you wrote about the extension back to the enron problem. today at the "washington post." the thing that is amazing to me is not only would they be willing to fly in the face of public opinion that is still quite angry even on the right at wall street for what happened in 2008 but go all the way back to the last scandal that happened in 2001. the last super embarrassing thing with all these republic an ties to it that they shouldn't want to remind the country about and say they want to undo those rules, too. it's striking to me to see the push from republican elected

officials and candidates in the face of public opinion about wall street. that's something i just don't understand. >> right. i think it goes to internal dynamics in the party. right? because if you're mitt romney and have a sort of somewhat reasonable moderate position, want to undo dodd/frank but say you're going to replace it with streamline version. or you're michele bachmann or herman cain and rick perry and want to get traction against mitt romney. what can you do to show mitt romney is too much of a compromising moderate, going to make deals with the democrats? say, i'm going to completely repeal dodd/frank and sarbanes-oxley, take that out, too. it's happening in an exaggerated rate where they're speaking to conservative base and funders and ideological folks and not coming up for air long enough to see how this is going to play before the country and say we want to roll back the regulations, cut taxes on the rich and, yeah, can't really explain how this is different from what george w. bush did.

>> ezra klein, "washington post" columnist and msnbc contributor, ezra, thanks very much for writing about this today. thanks for being here tonight. >> thank you. there's a story in today's news about drug testing the rich. a story that we almost decided to title "my cup runneth over." we decided against that title in the interest of taste. my cup runneth over for a drug testing story? the story is about drug testing and drug testing specifically the 1%. it's still genius even without that title. that would never make it on our ma? what are you doing here? it's megan. i'm getting new insurance. marjorie, you've had a policy with us for three years. it's been five years. five years. well, progressive gives megan discounts that you guys didn't. paperless, safe driver, and i get great service. meredith, what's shakin', bacon? they'll figure it out.

getting you the discounts you deserve. now, that's progressive. call or click today.

i'm not the democratic president or the republican president, i'm the president. >> the president today speaking in north carolina, criticizing republicans for what he described as their reflexive partisan opposition to his jobs plan to even ideas they and most republican voters support.

we'll have more on that coming up. and best new thing in the world today goes to 11 after spinal tap makes an unexpected cameo in today's political news.

♪ imagine there's no pizza at "talking points memo" they mentioned something we didn't notice about the spectacular edition of what we know about the career of presidential candidate herman cain. this is herman cain in a choir robe repurposing john lennon's "imagine" song about world peace to be a song about pizza and tacos.

we missed something "talking points memo" caught and to see this, you guys, you have to fast forward just a little bit from where we were. can we show that? there. there. do you see who that is? politics geeks of the world, do you see who that is? standing and enthusiastically cheering on herman cain, that is ben nelson. now a sort of democratic senator from the great state of nebraska. at the time of this video in 1991, he was the sort of democratic governor of the great state of nebraska. yay. good spotting. now, aside from his where are they now cheering on herman cain cameo in the news today, senator ben nelson of nebraska is also in the news today because he says he is going to vote with the republicans again against president obama's jobs bill. he and senator jon tester of montana already did vote against the jobs bill as a whole once but now that they're breaking it

up into its component parts for the senate to vote on it again, now senators jon tester and ben nelson and maybe joe lieberman, god bless him he still exists, now these conservative democrats say they may vote against even just the specific part of president obama's jobs bill that stops the layoffs of teachers and firefighters and cops. incidentally the polling on this issue is amazing. in the new cnn poll when they asked people whether they favor or oppose providing federal money to state governments to allow them to hire teachers and first responders, the number of americans who say yes, i favor that, is 75%. 75%. that is an unreal number for an economic policy. even republicans want to save teachers and first responder jobs. even republicans support that by a huge number. republicans support that by 63%. think about that for a second. if a huge majority of republican voters supports the teachers, cops, firefighters jobs bill, then republican elected officials voting against it are voting against what the voters

want by a huge margin. they are voting against even what their own voters want by a huge margin. that is a gigantic and very exploitable split between what republican voters want and what elected republican officials are doing that. into that amazing opportunity for democrats, conservedems are siding with the republican senators who are siding with no voters, not even their own, who are siding against firefighters and against cops and against teachers. >> just last week, all the republicans in the senate got together and blocked this jobs bill. they refused to even debate it. 100% of republicans in the senate voted against it. we got 100% no from republicans in the senate. >> also from a small, weird handful of democrats you got no's as well. conservedem senators like these guys always try to get ahead by

trashing their own party. that's what makes them conservedems. in this case the calculus is weird. it means tacking to the right of the democrats, yes, which they love to do but means tacking to right of the democrats into what is clearly an electoral no man's land. joining us now is jared bernstein, former member of president obama's economic team, former economic adviser to vice president joe biden and who is now a senior fellow at the center on budget priorities and msnbc contributor. jared, thanks for being here. >> thank you for inviting me. >> voters are as close as they get to unanimous. that keeping teachers and firefighters and cops on the job is the right thing to do right now. is there anybody else who is opposed to this along with these republican senators and ben nelson? are economists as a group saying this is a bad idea or something? >> no, i mean, you can always find some economist to say something bad about anything. overall it's widely recognized that the president's jobs plan in total is what's needed to start nudging the unemployment

rate in the right direction. if we don't do that, we're probably going to be looking at an unemployment rate that's 9% or north of that a year from now like we are now. we have democrats to the right of republicans. i was struck by these poll results. 27% more republicans wanted to see teachers and firefighters and first responders keep their jobs and i remember, rachel, from back in the recovery act days where you don't have to be well versed in the economics of keynesianism to understand this. mayors were saying, i have pink slips in this hand to hand out to a bunch of teachers and a recovery act check over here so i can rip up the pink slips and keep teachers on their jobs. this is simple stuff. >> in terms of the economic messages, jared, it's hard to get better polling numbers in any policies than the president has on most aspects of the jobs bill.

but on the republican side, the republican presidential candidates and republicans in the house are sort of trading the lead in terms of who's going to get the lead economic message. we keep hearing about how much people like the amazing herman cain 9-9-9 plan. now that mr. cain is polling so well, i understand we have new analysis of how that plan won't work? >> this is incredible. this is part and parcel of what we've been discussing and what you were talking about with ezra. the idea the folks are speaking to themselves in an insular way that they are definitely leaving the country behind. this new analysis out today from the tax policy center which is a very highly regarded nonpartisan scorekeeper of this stuff shows that the herman cain 9-9-9 plan would raise taxes on the lowest income people. their income is around 10,000 bucks on average. would raise their taxes by $1,600, raise federal taxes on the middle class by over $3,000, would lower taxes, take them down, lower tax payments for

those in the top 1%, okay? so those at the very tip -- actually really the only group that's been doing well. would lower their taxes by over $300,000. then when you get up to the stratosphere to the very top of that top percentile, the top .1%, their average income is around 8 million bucks a year. that's a pretty nice neighborhood. this takes their tax bill down $1.8 million. takes it down. okay? so i mean, this is -- i guess -- class warfare? i don't know what to call it. i was actually talking to my 12-year-old daughter, which i don't like to burden her with this sort of thing. i wanted to get a kids response to this. i actually showed her these numbers. and her response was, whack job. i thought that was actually pretty good. >> paul ryan of wisconsin, the house republicans' top budget guy has essentially endorsed the herman cain 9-9-9 plan and likes the sound of it. >> here's the thing. sorry, go ahead.

sorry. here's the thing on that, rachel. paul ryan, a couple economists out there, couple people i've been debating lately, now that these numbers are out, i really want to hear what those folks have to say about it. these numbers are -- they just came out this afternoon. we have to keep an eye on that. >> in terms of the democrats versus the republicans on this, if we have the top house republican endorsing the 9-9-9 plan, can't the democrats say -- >> that's exactly the point. you could not be more out of step with where not just the american people or the democrats or -- but with the broad majority of democrats and republicans. i keep thinking there are tea party folks out there who are among the 20 million-plus people who are un and underemployed. do they want to see their taxes go up? do they want to see their opportunities to work get thrown

by the wayside as republicans throw this plan under the bus for political advantage? do they want to see their kids in classrooms that are twice as large as they would be otherwise? i really think this stuff is coming to a head. i think the president has got it right in bringing this message over the heads of congress right to the people. >> jared bernstein, former member of president obama's economic team, former economic adviser to vice president biden. thanks for your time tonight. really appreciate it. >> my pleasure. best new thing in the world today, mitt romney and spinal tap together at last. that is coming up.

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hey, good news. and i do not mean it in an ironic way or what i'm about to say is actually bad news that proves a point. i mean actual good news. today we learned for the first time in three years there will be an increase in social security payments. so if you or anyone you know is living on social security or partially dependent on social security for your income, you're about to get a raise. the cost of living increase. about 3.5%. this is good news for the individual older people getting this extra money. obviously it's also good news for the economy. people being poor and having no money to spend, it isn't just a symptom of the economy being bad, it is a cause of the economy staying bad. so more people having money is a good thing. for the people who get the extra

money and for all of us. yay social security. also, yay social security. because look at this. this shows that as the economy has swirled round the toilet bowl, as we have not yet been able to recover from wall street exploding at the end of the bush presidency, the one age group of americans not seeing its poverty rate raise significantly is older americans. everybody else in the country has seen poverty levels rise, older americans have been relatively speaking okay. not great, but okay. not falling rapidly into poverty. that's because of social security. so yay social security. again. unless you wish we had more elderly people living in poverty in this country, you should be psyched we have social security and you should be motivated to defend it. you know who hasn't had anything to be psyched about? kids have not. kids and young families with kids. even as social security has presented older people from the worst vagaries of the economic collapse, kids and young families with kids have not had the same kinds of protection.

in the era of ronald reagan and again in the era of bill clinton we frankly took an ax to the public programs that support kids in poor families. reagan just attacked people for being poor, on the campaign trail against welfare queens implying anybody taking public assistance didn't need it and was just scamming you. bill clinton took less of a republican culture war approach to it but instead bought into the right wing arguments that a public program to support kids in poor families was some kind of incentive to be poor. if you took that incentive away, people would stop deciding to be poor the way they were. public programs to help kids in poor families were slashed under ronald reagan and slashed again under bill clinton. during the bubble years and boom years when there weren't that many poor families in america relatively speaking, those programs being gone, it did hurt some but did not hurt as much as it could have. now that we are back to a time with a lot of poverty, not having those programs to help

kids in poor families, not having those programs hurts a lot now. we killed welfare when we did not need it. now we need it and, well, actually what we're back to is reaganite culture war. republicans blaming people for being poor and mounting political stunts to shame and humiliate poor people in order to demonstrate the political point that anybody needing help right now is really just a scam artist. this year republicans in more than 30 states proposed drug testing americans applying for welfare or food stamps or other public programs to help poor families. >> i so want drug testing. i so want -- >> so want it. south carolina's republican governor nikki haley said she so wants drug testing. >> it's something i've been wanting since the first day i walked into office. >> nikki haley's policy goal and unrequited dream thus far as governor of south carolina is to collect body fluid samples from fellow south carolinians receiving public assistance or

unemployment benefits. this year 12 states proposed drug testing for unemployment insurance and some considered making it a requirement for food stamps and home heating assistance. forced drug testing measures were enacted already in three of the 30 states in which republicans proposed them this year. including of course in florida, where republican governor rick scott says his forced drug testing program is going totally awesome. >> i gave a speech yesterday to the chamber of commerce in miami. when i went through the things i accomplished, it was a standing ovation when i said we drug screen welfare recipients. >> i wonder what an almost standing ovation looks like. i'll sit back. point is, drug testing poor people is awesome. politically. for rick scott. and also effective? hmm. >> what does the evidence show on the percentage of welfare recipients who do use drugs? >> what did you find? >> i think the numbers are this. it's only 2% of the people -- this just started july 1st.

i think it's about -- the numbers are off a little bit. like only 2% to 2.5% of the people who did the test. >> okay. maybe not super effective since 2%, 2.5% is way lower than known drug use levels in the population at large. so maybe poor people aren't using drugs at a hugely disproportionate level compared to the rest of the population. but still, it's nice to humiliate them for being poor people, isn't it? isn't that the point? in ohio there's a message for the drug test the poor. this is robert hagan, a democrat, responding to his state's republican drug test the poor proposals with his own drug testing bill. his bill would drug test other people who get state money. not just poor people. his bill would drug test, say, statewide elected officials and members of the general assembly and the state supreme court. and this is my favorite part of it.

he would suggest drug testing recipients of t.a.r.p. money. anybody who got bank bailout money. isn't that taxpayer money? you want to drug test poor people who get money from the government? how about we drug test rich people who get money from the government? the author of that bill, ohio state representative robert hagan from youngstown, ohio, joins us for the interview next.

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on october 3rd, 2008, president george w. bush signed the troubled asset relief program into law. t.a.r.p. legislation that bailed out the banks in this country so that the world's great recession would not be the world's great depression 2.0. in return for the billions of dollars the banks received, not one banker was forced to pee in a cup. contrast that with politics this year in three dozen states across the country where republican lawmakers proposed drug testing, forced drug testing of americans asking for a different kind of help, applying for welfare, food stamps or public programs that help poor families. one lawmaker in ohio is trying to make bankers and other recipients of government money in ohio live by the same standards being asked of the poor. joining us tonight for the interview, ohio state representative robert hagan, a democrat from youngstown, ohio. mr. hagan, appreciate your time

tonight. thanks for being here. >> you're welcome. thank you for allowing me to tell the rest of the country how insensitive and ridiculous my republican colleagues are in the legislature. >> ohio is one of the states around the country where republican lawmakers are pushing forced drug testing for poor people applying for public assistance. what do you think is motivating that. >> rachel, there's a couple things that motivate that. let me first start out by saying our governor, john kasich, worked for lehman brothers. and you and every, pretty much all your people, the viewers know that lehman brothers went under. he was the vice president of lehman brothers. wall street started to go under. bankers, banking started to go under. so they asked and begged for additional help for the taxpayers. when john kasich, lehman brothers vice president decided between the time he was a congressman and the time he became our governor, he lost a

lot of money and he came to the statehouse trying to pretend that that actually did not happen. that lehman brothers did not go under, millions and millions of dollars were lost on wall street and hurt main street. they're trying to move the discussion away from really what's happening. what they've done and destroyed many people's opportunity for the american dream. so many people's opportunity to get health care. they've moved the discussion away from the issues of jobs and they keep bringing up issues about attacking working people. this issue, too, in ohio, is extremely important. taking away the rights of police, firing teachers. that's what they're trying to do. they're moving the subject, moving the issue away from what they have done and they've destroyed this country, turned it upside down economically and now trying to pretend, let's do this, in the most sensitive way, show the people we're going after the poorest by testing them. that's not only just the poorest. it's people that are on workers' comp, people that are laid off

and getting benefits for being laid off. those individuals also under their plan would be tested. what i say in clear, plain english is what's good for the goose should be good for the politician. let's start testing the supreme court justices, all the legislators, all the people that are getting money. we have a jobs ohio program where millions and millions of dollars are going out. so many more millions of dollars that have gone out to the wall street friends of john kasich. much, much more than they have against the poor people. so, you know, they take away their dignity, the poor people. they're already struggling trying to find a better way to make a living, get a job, provide health care. even maybe give the opportunity to send their kids to school and end up having to go through the drug testing. i said to kasich and the rest of the republicans if you want to do that, in a very insensitive way, subject yourself, too, to

the drug testing and alcohol testing you're trying to push on some of the poor people. bottom line is this -- bottom line, rachel, is this. you cannot divide us the way that they are trying to do. if you are going after the poor, then go after those who are wealthy and those who are the elite. they should subject themselves, too, and they are getting money and all of us are public servants and getting tax dollars and we should be subjected to the same test. >> that bottom line is what i want to ask about, because there are so many lives that are responding to the agenda in the legislature and do you feel that while people are fighting sb-5 and trying to repeal the union stripping law and the other response of backlash to the agenda, and is that turning to a broader discussion about who public policy ought to help, and who it is being used to punish? are people having that broader discussion now in ohio?

>> well, we are trying to have a broader discussion, and the police officers and the teachers under attack are deciding to be politically involved and make this issue, too does go down in defeat and they will vote no, and sometimes it happens in the legislature, because i have railed against some of the plans that the republicans have promoted on the floor of the ohio house. i have screamed and yelled to my constituents to get involve and to talk about contacting their legislators and other politicians, because this agenda that the republicans are pushing is a damaging agenda to the american dream, to people being participants in that. and so, yeah, it is really going to make me p.o.'d and i get upset when i'm trying to fight for so many people like this, and the agenda is shifting and people are talking about issues and attacking the poor, and

attacking working families and attacking teachers and upending education, cutting the local government fund, and this is what they think is all right, because they don't like government, republicans don't like government. they don't like it, i guess maybe they should find another job, but quite frankly, i will be there to fight them every step of the way. >> state representative robert hagan joining us from columbus, ohio, tonight. thank you, sir, for joining us to night, and nice to meet you. okay. best new thing in the world [ female announcer ] got a bad odor in your high-efficiency washer? clean it with tide washing machine cleaner. three uses will help remove odor-causing residues and leave your washer clean and fresh. to help maintain your h.e. washer, use tide washing machine cleaner once a month. and always wash with tide h.e. detergent, specially formulated for proper h.e. performance. tide washing machine cleaner. clean laundry starts with a clean washer. well we're here to get you custom orthotic inserts.

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okay. best new thing in the world today, although you won't see the billionaire koch brothers or sharron angle or anybody else demanding the repeal of health reform, what is happening on your screen right now is the tea party, the tea party, as in the canadian rock 'n' roll band that named itself the tea party back in 1990. they reportedly pioneered a middle east fusion thing called moroccan roll. true. they are not about politics at all, but they are about selling

records, and way back in 1993, tea party the band bought the website and now tea party.com is worth to be $1 million or something, and that is because of politics, and the bass player says that so much damage has been done to their good name by the name of the political movement that has the same name even though they have no association, and he says that quote, tea party was a euphanism that they used for getting high and writing poetry and vibing with each other, but as canadians we are sensitive to the criticism of socialized medicine so the band is selling the domain name, because this is not much fun for them, and the internet is supposed to be fun. domain names could and should be fun, and we own several at this show including one about the republican presidential name who cannot be googled, but it is

spelled rick santorum, and rick perry missed the chance to buy his natural domain name rickperry.com, so instead, the mr. free enterprise has to campaign out of rickperry.org, like he is branch of npr or something, and today the washington post reports on other rick perry domain names that he apparently does not own including stick it to rick.com and bury perry.com. americans against perry.com. christians 4 perry.com and not to be confused with evangelicals for perry.com, and christians for perry.com, and that is to rick perry not.com, and also how he is not a conservative because he developed a gestapo police, and it is signed by a guy who describes himself as a dog breeder. and it is hard to know whether the dog breeder guy is the guy running it.

and they know that they, the campaign did not buy these sites, and the same for mitt romney's team and barack obama's team. and they are proud to say they own this site though, which mitt.com where you can take a change on the ever-changing positions of mitt romney. the internet is supposed to be late bit fun at least this part of it. you can see why a band named tea party would want to get out its own domain name here, and it is $1 million here, and yeah, you can't figure out who they are, but when we went looking today, we found a tea party video which seems to be about, well -- ♪ taking taking hold ♪ i have lost all control >> i am the wrong audience for

this. it is so much like when "spinal tap" got booked by mistake to play at the military base and they went into that song that's the song "sex farm" and we are trying to make the connection between the tea party the band and spinal tap and see if it is like i remembered and here it is on youtube and because that spinal tap "sex farm" song is popular, a little ad pops up on the youtube and it is this ad, governor chris christie stands with mitt and will you? paid for by romney for president, and right out of david st. hubbin's mouth, and who says that mitt romney has little understanding of the younger generation, he not only sponsors a video on youtube, but he targets "sex farm" and you have provided the new fun thing of the day.