well, happy friday afternoon to you. i am dylan ratigan and the big story this afternoon, premium support. it could soon be the new medicare if the latest overhaul plan comes into law. it is a bipartisan proposal, penned by democratic senator ron wyden along with house budget committee chair republican paul ryan. you remember his other attempt to reform medicare earlier this year. it was really ripped apart by the dems, deemed as the death of medicare as we know it. but this is a new attempt, and in it, seniors would have the option to pick traditional medicare or use a, quote, premium support government voucher in which they would be able to buy private insurance through a national exchange. remember, we don't even have a national exchange, because we have a monopoly. so the creation of a national exchange alone, at least one of consequence, in and of itself, could effectively be a neutralization, anyway, of medicare, as a campaign talking

point in 2012 and quiet some of the political pro wrestling long enough to actually achieve some meaningful reform, like a national health exchange for all of us, or at least some of us. no wonder the possibility of such things is being dismissed by the white house as radical. with us now for a "d.r. show" exclusive, the plan's co-sponsor, and an old teacher and inspiration on this subject, senator ron wyden. senator, it's a pleasure to see you. >> thank you, dylan. >> we've had lengthy conversations going back years about the idea of matching patients with doctors in a national exchange, as they do in -- with your staff there, and everybody else in the congress. it appears you have a victory here, at least in trying to expand that available pool, is that correct? >> there's an opportunity here, dylan. i think everybody understands, you cannot get on top of this health care challenge unless you tackle medicare. it is a huge issue and we need

to approach it in a different way. one that brings people together constructively. here's an opportunity to put side by side traditional medicare, which its marketplace clout and it's been very popular with progressive folks. and then say it should go up head to head with those who favored choice and competition, and i think the two hold each other accountable. >> what is the greatest barrier -- let me put it this way. there have been clear barriers to your efforts to do this. one of them is the stranglehold of the private insurance monopoly, which doesn't want to deal with the competition. another is organized labor, which has a benefit of very strong negotiating capacity to get health benefits in an employer-based health system, and a national exchange for health care is pretty much bad for both of those special interests. and they're both very influential, where you work. how do you believe you can navigate against them? >> you have just described, dylan, what i call the status

quo caucus. there are a wide array of special interest groups that benefit from doing business as usual. that's simply indefensible. you look, for example, just at the failure of the super committee, as a result of the failure of the super committee, there are going to be additional reductions in medicare or spending. so we've got to say, this can't be put off any longer. i think this is an opportunity to make some basic kinds of changes. and when i look at this program, there are some obvious kinds of opportunities. for example, congressman ryan has agreed to support something i feel very strongly about, and that is to cap the catastrophic expenses that senior citizens face under medicare. that's not there today. that's an improvement in the program. >> matt miller, who is a panelist and a guest host on this show, wrote of your proposal the following. he said, referred to the wyden/ryan proposal, "this is the most fascinating policy and

political maneuver of the year." i don't know what that says about our year. that may be an indictment of the year on some level, but it certainly is a compliment, however you want to interpret it. was there an aspect of this where you're attempting to show constructive behavior between people in washington? i mean, this just feels like there's more to this than just the health care legislation. >> well, matt was being very generous, of course, and i think, again, there's an opportunity to tackle major kinds of issues, in particular, in the health care arena. for example, we ought to smooth the transition to medicare. and one way to do that is to expand choice for employers and employees. so what congressman ryan has agreed to do, and it would be for, literally, millions of workers, is bring back something i felt strongly about, and that's free choice vouchers. let's give employers who want to

the opportunity to give their employees funds for their health care, it would be tax free for the worker, a tax write-off for the employer. give that worker and employers more choices and give the worker the opportunity to go to these exchanges and get a better deal on their health. >> why do you think the white house is calling it radical? >> well, i am not certain that all the folks up there have read it. for example, one of the things i was struck by is congressman ryan and i have agreed to have a more generous rate of growth for seniors under medicare than the terms that the president offered during the deficit reduction negotiations with speaker boehner. so my hope is is that says folks over there get a chance to look at the specifics, will begin the opportunity to really see people work together and not just to criticize. >> and as you may or may not

know, i have a book coming out next month -- >> i heard! >> -- called "greedy bastard$!". >> let's make sure it's at powell's in portland, and there's another store up in new york, you know -- >> indeed. indeed. i'm going to try to cut a distribution deal with you. but one of the points that i make, one of the tools that greedy bastards use is their influence over government to avoid competition. it is a great way to make money, it's a great use of money to pay a politician to help you preserve a monopoly. we watched mckaren ferguson, i believe it was, during the last debate come up and get shot down. right now the health insurance lobby spends -- i guess last year, $376.5 million. the point is, what you represent in these sort of real basic american values of hey, what happened if we allowed people to compete and choose, which is crazy, apparently, that's a real threat to the profitability of the health industry. do you feel like you have anymore push in your effort now than you did three years ago when you tried this?

>> i do. and i think, particularly, people are looking at approaches like that offered to members of congress and the federal employee health benefit plan. if an insurance company, in effect, mouses around a member of congress, delays on paying a bill, doesn't follow through on what their contractually obligated to do, the member of congress with fire their insurance company. they can do what actually goes on in the marketplace, they can say, this isn't satisfactory, i'm firing you, and go make another choice. if it's good enough for members of congress, it ought to be good enough for the rest of us. and that's the kind of approach that i think ought to be available to seniors. if seniors want to keep traditional traditional medicare, i'm going to fight with all my strength to make sure they can. if they want to choose one of these different alternatives, they ought to have that choice as well. >> senator, from your mouth to the laws of the land. >> we shall see. have a good holiday. >> you as well. ron wyden, ladies and gentlemen, working out of oregon with none other than paul ryan.

coming up here on "the d.r. show," fixing the health care system. one way to actually create jobs, by the way. another proven method to create new businesses and create incentives to do it. we're talking about innovation and entrepreneurship, coming up. plus, the military versus bradley manning, as the accused wi wikileaker comes out fighting. and we've got some new tunes destined to become classics. ed a adam sandler, watch out. there's a different cream. i challenge that with olay. i've found one cream with everything i'm looking for... olay total effects. with 7 age defying effects in just one, easy to use cream. i've swapped to all-in-one total effects. why don't you swap too? is the pain reliever orthopedic doctors recommend most for arthritis pain, think again. and take aleve.

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well, we just had a conversation about creating a healthy health care system that represents our values, freedom of choice, open competition, crazy things like that. doing so would also be a big boost in our quest to create 30 million jobs, expanding coverage, lowering cost, something we all need, something we need more of. it's a win/win for new business creati creation, eliminating the burden of the employer system in the interest of a few folks who pay off our politicians. and our next guest knows a thing or two about how new businesses and new ideas are the core fuel for any economy. and we're happy to welcome back carl sclim, president and ceo of the coffman foundation and it's nice to see you. happy holidays to you. >> thank you. >> your thoughts when you see particularly this piece of legislation with ron wyden and paul ryan that's designed to

relieve the stress on small businesses by creating the opt-out into these exchanges? >> this is, i think, fantastic news, at least or two or three fronts. i think you just saw the bravest democrat and the smartest republican come together and basically say, whatever we got isn't going to work, and why i think this is exciting is it's shows there might be a stable, workable situation, market-based situation. and the reason that's so important is one of the things that is stopping and slowing down the formation in new businesses, which create all the jobs in the united states, is this question about the requirement of health care coverage for employees and these new businesses. so if this gives certitude, if this looks like it's going to give some sense that there'll be a settled issue in health care and insurance, this grace. >> so if you and i want to start a small business, we're relatively low on scratch, we can look at each others and say, at least we know our employees can go to the national health exchange and we're not going to

be on the hook for it, and we can continue to solve whatever problem we're trying to solve. that's what you're saying? >> yeah, and the other dimension is we know how much it's going to cost. the data shows that as new businesses are formed, the new businesses in the united states are employing 1.5 fewer people than they did. and this resolves around the question of the health insurance requirements. >> and if you were to look -- so we're talking about health insurance and health insurance requirements' impact on new business formation and hiring. >> right. we also talk a lot in this program about tax code in general. the tax code obviously affects the treatment of health care, but the tax cold reflects the flow of capital in general. right now our tax code provides a strong incentive to take capital out of america and invest it elsewhere. invest it in china and their development or to take capital and retain it in places that are not deployed, that are not invested in our country, in new

businesses. how determinative is the tax code in dictating who we're actually getting capital or money flowing to hire people to solve problems and to create jobs? >> it's determinative in the sense that there really is such a thing as trickle-down economics. so when we have these incentives on the broad economy that affect large businesses, that actually are one way that new businesses are resolved, you know, we have this form of big firm/small firm capitalism emergent in the united states over the last 20 years. and the money that big firms use to acquire small firms is, in fact, subject to the ve sis attitudes of how they're taxed. so it relates to implications and incentives for small business. >> and i want to stop for a second here. i think this is an interesting misperception or bogus debate. there's a perception that trickle-down economics, and its

theoretical premise, is that if you let rich people have a lot of money, that they'll hire people and they'll have jobs. that's what people have interpreted trickle-down economics to mean that. >> right. >> that's not what we're talking about. what you're talking about is tax code, trade policy, capital market policy, banking policy dictate where capital flows, and because that's not a good or a bad thing, that's a mathematical fact, and you can choose that capital to flow into investment in your country. >> right. >> where did that get lost in all of this? how did this come about not taxing rich people, or making sure that we don't miss -- i feel like this is so distorted. >> dylan, in the old days, economics used to be called political economy. that's what the subject, the discipline was called. and you can't decouple economic questions from politics. and these days, you know, we are

forcing politics through the vocabulary of economics. when you think about all this business called class warfare, the issue everyone's agreed on is we want to restart the economy. but we overshadow with a lot of political debate underneath. you know, if you could de-couple these things, we'd get much clearer economic policy. because as you point out, there's no disputing the fact that rich people are the investors, and they invest more, there'll be creation of more jobs, period. >> and it's not just rich people, it's wealth warehousing institutions, private and public, the money resides in locations, not just in rich people's bank accounts. the money resides in corporate bank accounts, the money resides in public coffers, there's money everywhere, all around us, but there's no incentive structure for money to invest in the development of new businesses in america. >> that's right. that's right. >> and our politicians are paid to make policies that don't do that? >> right. well, part of that also is, you

know, if you go to washington and the assembly of people who sell rent, as economics tell us, okay, it's a rent. it's a special subsidy ghoothat government gives your business. guess who don't get those subsidies? small businesses. and i don't think they need it or want it. my prescription would be, just leave the federal government out of small businesses, particularly the start-ups. ignore them for a couple of years. wait until they get income to tax, wait until they're doing something that needs to be regulated. let this undercurrent take hold. >> a pleasure to see you. we were talking to bill deblasio, who's running a thing with the pension funds in new york, to disclose the companies that give a lot of political donations and shame them, all right? and he had a great point, which is if a company has to start giving a lot of money to government, with it probably means their business isn't going that well. >> it's a good point. >> yeah. a pleasure, carl. president obama this afternoon addressed some 6,000

jewsish americans at a convention in d.c. this as the white house is attempting to cement its commitment to israel. the president losing a lot of support from the jewish community since taking office. in the beginning of his term, he had an approval rating in the 70s. that number is down to 51%. the friday mega panel is here. ari melber, krystal ball, and toure, who, by the way, as of this morning, we had no idea where the man was. he's really been missing for weeks. we ultimately found him on the west coast. i don't know how they even found him, but we dragged him -- krystal, i think, is the toure hunter. we sent her out to california to wrangle -- >> dylan, amazingly, they found me via e-mail. can you believe it? >> you know, only nbc and the cia have these methods of e-mail. your thoughts, ari, on the president's sort of effort to win back an estranged ally, if they ever were an ally.

>> well, i think you hear these kind of conversations every four years around democratic candidates. the fact is that after african-americans, jewish americans actually form the most loyal base group in the democratic matter. there was discussions over whether that might change with barack obama, but it didn't. 51% approval is actually higher than he's doing among the country at large. so, yes, to the extent that there are generalized concerns with the president and the economy, they're reflected, but to me, the tracking number here is better than everyone else. and specifically on the issues, look, bibi netanyahu built up a lot of capital with the republican majority in the house. he came, he gave a big speech. they've tried to sort of do this inside-out strategy. i don't think that the party in israel has much to show for it. i think that the president, this president, like the last president, has basically said, he stands by a two-state solution, but he's not going to force action on the ground there. people who want more, but my core message and my conclusion here is he's doing fine on this

politically. >> krystal, the -- what is it, ai pack is the political action committee, the israeli political action committee -- >> aipac. >> people seem to live in terror of those guys, because they seem to be very good at intimidating and taking people out with that money. how much of a factor is the menacing aspect of being on the wrong side of israel money in this country politically, to everybody? >> well, it's a huge deal. i mean, you put your finger right on it. it's not just about jewish voters, it's also about these interest groups that have a lot of power and a lot of money behind them. so you see, i mean, it's been pretty unbelievable to me, actually, the depths that the republican presidential candidates have sunk to in order to try to paint the president as anti-israel, something that just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. and as ari was pointing out, there's been this narrative of,

oh, the president's base is dissatisfied with him. and that also just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. where the president is struggling is with independents and moderates. the base is very pleased with him. and i include in the base jewish voters who tend to go democratic. there was a recent poll that showed if you match up the president versus mitt romney, he's got about a 40-point edge among jewish voters. so it's a little bit of a myth. >> it seems like the thing is to be a successful politician right now, toure, you just have to be -- you have to be okay to lose the support of people who don't like jobs and are into poverty. because if you're into poverty and not having a job, then none of these candidates, obviously, are very good for you. but if you don't care about poverty and joblessness, then you can pick whichever one you like. >> i find it interesting that once again an obama presidential campaign will be sort of painted around prisms of religion. the last time islam and christianity were huge subtexts, because they didn't want to talk overtly about race. this time mormonism, if mitt

romney is actually the candidate, and of course, where the jewish vote goes and how they're going to support, will be a huge narrative. so, i mean, again, sort of religion dominating, you know, what we're talking about in america. >> and i have found, when you talk to most hungry people or unemployed people, religion is the most important issue. they are not going to take a job from somebody who does not believe in god, and they certainly are not going to take your food. i'll tell you that. >> exactly. >> so at least we're focused on the right thing. anyway, moving on to the military versus bradley manning, the private first class making his first appearance in a military courtroom today, accused of leaking classified government secrets to wikileaks. not much progress at today's preliminary hearing after the defense called for the presiding officer to step down, claiming bias. this hearing will ultimately determine whether manning will face a court-martial. if that does happen, a statement from his attorney is likely to tell all of us where the defense is headed, guys.

take a look at this. he says, "all this stuff has been leaked. a year and a half later, where's the danger? where's the harm?" once around the horn here. do you think there is room, ari, for a "what's the big deal" offense? >> no. as an attorney, i can tell you that the violation of the law here has to do with releasing classified information. so the debate in the courtroom, even in a military courtroom like this, will be whether the information was classified and whether it was improperly leaked. that is a serious crime and that is a serious crime regardless of whether, in fact, as a policy matter, that is too harsh a punishment or we have overclassified, which i think are legitimate concerns. but the real question in a courtroom here is, did he break this law? and you can't say, oh, well, i broke the law and it didn't hurt anyone. if you, for example, drive drunk and don't crash, that's not a defense to the dui.

>> has anybody, ari, ever gotten out of a classified leak situation? and if sob how? >> the way we've seen this tested is not so much going after the leak, but going after the publisher. in the pentagon papers and other famous cases, we have seen the courts go up against very strong national security arguments, and the argument being, hey, you endangered the nation, or this could have gotten our brave men and women in the field killed, and the courts have said that there's the right to publish. the difference here, and even i think steadfast defenders of wikileaks acknowledge this, that the difference is under current u.s. law, you can't be in the military -- and i'm not passing judgment here, you know, we don't know the whole story -- but you cannot be in the military and take material s a release them. so that accusation is the problem. whether that widens the net out in other ways is a different question. and briefly, i want to add there are ambassadors and other people who have had to resign. there are real things that have happened both good in the sense

of tunisia and corruption being exposed and both bad from the u.s. context where diplomacy was interfered. >> i totally agree with ari. the martyrization of bradley manning is very troubling. because if lots of soldiers, or even if three or four more soldiers did the same thing and leaked things when they were unhappy with the direction of the military policy, it would suddenly become impossible for us to conduct the military in the way that we do. so you're putting everybody in jeopardy. >> so what you're saying, toure, is you're much better to preserve a house of lies in order to preserve the power of the military than risk having the lies that are leading to us murder people around the world be discussed? >> i'm saying that a soldier cannot take it into his own hands to challenge policy, because that makes it dangerous for every single american. >> got it. and better that we just fund the assassination of everybody on the planet without knowing what we're doing is membership counter point to you, because i'm not super into that. anyway, we'll take a break.

the panel stays. i'm not saying that you are. that's not fair. toure stays, krystal stays, ari stays. coming up, our favorite thing on foreign politicians, they tend to be a bit for forth coming and senator byron dorgan is our specialist right after this. is . yeah, and it's got apps. nice. it's got vudu, twitter, facebook. no honey, not facebook. ♪ honey, you think my sweater's horrendous? cats don't skate. i think it kicks butt. [ male announcer ] get low prices on the gifts they love, like lg tvs with the latest technology. and get free shipping to your store or home. save money. live better. walmart. try bayer advanced aspirin. it's not the bayer aspirin you know. it's different. first, it's been re-engineered with micro-particles. second, it enters the bloodstream fast, and rushes relief to the site of your tough pain. the best part? it's proven to relieve pain

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lots of pretend relief in washington this afternoon, after avoiding a pretend government shutdown crisis to distract us from actually talking about the actual issues in this country. but it does prove what a very real mess washington actually is, that they're left to create pretend problems with pretend solutions when we have very many real and massive problems like $700 trillion worth of unregulated credit derivatives that we're all paying for, we found out again, $30 trillion, or insider trading in congress, or the most expensive health care in the world for the 37th best care, or second-most expensive education in the world for the 20th best education, or an efficiency ratio that dates back to eisenhower. but why would we do any of that when we could pretend to shut the government back down and

restart it. joining us to share his insights into the current dysfunction on the hill, former senator byron dorgan. and senator, how much longer do you think the american people will take this? >> well, not much. i don't know how much farther you can go than 9% approval rating. it might go to 7 or 5, but 9% approval rating reflects, i think, what the american people understand. we face very serious problems in this country, and what's happening in washington and in congress is an inability to deal with even the most mundane things. >> but haven't the genius about what they've done in congress is even in the face of a 9% disapproval rating, or it could go to 4%, because it is not an election, because it is a gerrymandered district that is sold at auction and fund-raising, i can actually retain my job 70 to o 80% of the time, even if only 9% of the people like me, because i've got the system so rigged to my benefit, it doesn't really matter what they think. >> yeah. and the system, as you know,

this is the first time in this system that we will see the full -- i shouldn't use the word "flower," the full flower of citizens united, in which unlimited quantities of money can come from undisclosed sources in any direction and buy the political system. that supreme court decision was devastating. and this will be played out for the first time fully in this election. and it's a disaster. >> krystal? >> senator, i just have a simple question for you. i mean, how did the atmosphere in washington become so poisoned? you served in the house and then in the senate over a number of years. has it always been this ugly, or is this a new thing? how did we get here? >> it's changed dramatically. we have a fair number of new people who have came to congress who promised their constituents, if you elect me, i promise you, i won't compromise on anything. i'll stand for my so-called principles and i will never compromise. but i've described previously a letter i kept on my desk for a long while. it was written by newt gingrich, signed by newt gingrich, and it said, a lot of people say we'd

like to talk like newt, so he said, we've language tested this with focus groups and polls and so on, and here's what you should to. when you talk about your opponent, he said to republican candidates all across the country, he sent them letters, he said, when you talk about your opponent, use words like, betray, sick, pathetic, lie, anti-flag, anti-family, corrupt. those are the words that newt said you should apply to your opponents in order to win elections. well, you know what, that's just disqualifying in my judgment. i would the disown a democrat who gave that kind of recommendation in a political system. but it started back in the mid-'80s and early '90s with newt gingrich. >> senator, we're talking about the potential of a government shutdown, and as soon as you mention that, the debate or the discussion is instantly changed and erratically changed. a lot of americans, by law, are prevented from going on strike, which would be the same as a shutdown, and many americans,

are in a de facto sense, are prevented from going on strike or not showing up to work, because they would be fired and replaced. don't you think that there should be a law preventing congress from shutting down or going on strike? >> yeah, but, look. they're not shutting anything down, they're threatening it, but since the mid-1990s when speaker gingrich bragged about shutting the government down and then went ahead and shut it down, since that time, i think both sides have understand and especially the republicans, they don't want to put their hand on that burner again. you have all these threats and counter threats, eight or nine of them this year, but at the end, notice, they've never shut it down. what's unbelievable to me is all of these retard the capability of this country to talk about serious things and to try to help this country's economy recover and heal. >> which is why it's a good thing that we don't have an electoral process, because with the auctioning and gerrymandering, you can do it without having to risk your job. ari, go ahead. >> sure. senator, a lot of people said,

oh, how could we ever see this financial crisis coming? it shocked everyone and we had to take measures and emergency respond. but in 1989, you opposed bank deregulation, you had an amendment that would have restricted banks from doing trading. that was squelched. and briefly you said at the time, the kind of risk overhanging the financial institutions in this country will one day land with a thud and wake everybody up. how on earth could we have thought we'd continue to have this kind of system and not have to bail banks out? you were so on the money. the question i have is simplery, have any of your former colleagues ever pulled you aside and said, wow, we should have listened to you more? do you feel it's sort of as divisive as ever on how we look at these issues? not too many of them have frankly. and i'm not selling a book these days, but a couple years ago, i wrote a book called "reckless."

but, look, it just seems to me that we're in a big fix and this financial reform bill that was passed by the congress, i voted for it, because it was a baby step in the right direction. it didn't deal with too big to fail. it didn't restore glass-steagall. i mean, we should have restored the glass-steagall bill, we should have put in place those protections that existed for 70 to 80 years after the great depression, saying you've got to separate banks from securities and the other risky enterprises. but, you know, the financial reform bill didn't do that. and as dylan just said, you've got trillions and trillions, hundreds of trillions of dollars of credit default swaps out there, and some of the same activity is still happening that causes risk to this country. >> all right. we just bailed out -- i mean, we just bailed out the entire european swaps market, using the western world's currency. it's crazy. senator, your existence, however, gives the rest of us who fight from a smaller perch with a different platform that

much more hope to persevere, because if you've been hammering on these folks going back a few decades, surely the rest of us can hammer on these folks for a few decades to come. thank you, senator. >> thanks a lot, dylan. >> all right, byron dorgan. and thanks to the mega panel as well. we'll take a little bit of a break here. if you've got some mariah carey fatigue, i know i do. we're searching for a new hit holiday song, which toure will ultimately be the judge, i suppose. but we'll get into them after this. ♪ ♪ ♪

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now, i don't want you to get me wrong. i love christmas, and specifically, i do love christmas music. but a new "time" magazine article about mariah carey fatigue did get us to thinking. the big christmas song release this year is a justin bieber re-make of a song mariah carey wrote and recorded in 1984, perhaps all of our christmas carols could use a little

tune-up. most of the songs we do listen to were originally made in the 1940s and '50s. that's more than half a century of covers, remixes, and song bastardizati bastardizations. jackson 5's "santa claus is coming to town" is starting to make us wish we had had a flight delay. "jingle bell rock" classic, but it was made in the '50s. and of course, 30 straight days of bing crosby's "white christmas" on repeat, folks around here are starting to see a little red. all of this leads up to my big question. instead of rooting around for lesser known holiday songs, isn't it time that we all innovate? well, we hear at "the d.r. show" have come up with a few new christmas titles for 2012 and beyond. see what you think. our first title, "the six industries of christmas." not bad. this is my favorite, the second one, "grandma got run over by a

monopoly health care system." it's kind of a cautionary tale. and then, finally, every child's favorite, "rudolph the greedy bastard," available soon on itunes. after this, a journey into the heart of inequity. life in america seen through the windows of a greyhound bus. my doctor told me calcium

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all i remember was this big arm grabbing me, lifting me up. it was my daddy. now, growing up, my daddy never cried, told me he loved me, nothing like that. it just wasn't his way, being backwoods and all. but he put me in his arms and crying he said, today, i'm the most proudest man in the world and i love you. i was 10 foot tall and bulletproof that day. i still get chill bumps. >> that, the story of an arkansas army reservist who our next guest met during an overnight drive through kansas. just one of the many stories that he's collected about our fellow americans after traveling 70,000 miles during a seven-year period on a greyhound bus in this extraordinary nation. it's a journey that he says opened his eyes, specifically to the culture of poverty and the

facts of inequity that are base to this country. you can see him here, here with us, author, singer, and songwriter, doug levitt. his "the greyhound diaries: a digital memoir," with songs and memories is now available online. you can pick it up. what is the message that's in this piece of art that you've produced? >> i set out in 2004, with i saw -- i was aware of the poverty statistics, but saw a kind of unreflected crisis and thought, what can i do, if anything? so i set out on what i thought would be one six-week tour by gr greyhound, inspired by wpa-era projects that drew a fuller picture of america at an historic time. so, then, of course, it continued from there. >> and continued to where? >> well, you know, if you look at the poverty issue, when i

began, the numbers were 37 million americans in poverty. now 49 million americans in poverty, or the size of america's 50 largest cities put together. and -- but, unfortunately, numbers are numbers. connection, they don't move people. and so i set out to, and continue to, try to bridge a little bit of this narrative gap. >> and what did -- what did you find the most moving for you in your interaction -- in your journalism that you think that you have really become an artistic vessel for, such that might me and others can share that experience with you? >> one, the -- it's not trite, it may be trite, but the resilience of the american people. it's strange, you have -- it's such a diverse background of

folks on a greyhound. you know, rural and urban, black, white, latino, amish, tradespeople, veterans, elderly. but what everybody has in common is they can't afford -- generally, is that they can't afford to drive or fly for that matter. and that's kind of what brings everybody together. and as a result, there's no differentiated status. >> no first class. >> i'm definitely not getting elite class. and as a result, i think there's a commonality of experience. and because of the distances that people -- going from one state to the next can be the length of a transatlantic flight. so people have an opportunity to really share their stories with folks next to them, and it becomes kind of a reveal of people's experiences. >> it's interesting, we talk a lot on this show about jobs and tax policy and trade policy and we need to invest to do these things. then we'll talk about the

symptoms, we'll talk about unemployment, obviously, and we'll talk about obesity and diabetes and health care costs driven by that. but -- or education, i could get education in there. mental illness, another great narrative. all these narratives all go to poverty. poverty rates are high, diabetes rates are high, nutrition rates are low. poverty rates are high. educational rates are low, dropout rates are high. poverty rates are high, mental illness rate is high. poverty rate is high -- i mean, i can go down that list. and there is no better solution to poverty than a job. and there is no way to create a job if you do not have money -- if there's not an investment in your country. >> but even if you do have a job, a minimum wage -- >> right, it's a -- consider a crappy job not a job. >> even a minimum wage worker who works full-time 52 weeks a year, a single parent, is basically almost in poverty.

>> garbage. hand-to-mouth. >> yeah. >> in other words, we're not investing in elevating the quality of our work and elevating the quality of our communities in any way, shape, or form. and there is no more disastrous symptom of the problem than poverty. and poverty, itself, obviously, creates problems. >> that's right and what i have found consistently through this time is that there really is another gap, another disparity, and that's a narrative gap. a disparity in who's interests are reflected most. even our advancements, technological advancements, connecting people online, leave those who aren't further behind. and social networking, for all of its benefits, is a weighted average in favor of those who are networked in. i'll just give you an example. in 2004, on a journey traversing the entire country, i averaged

seeing three laptops. today, the number is the same. nor do you see folks with smartphones. and so, you know, twitter, again, for all of its benefits, it is -- you'll find twitter trends echoed as news in a kind of multiplier effect. and so in any case, there's essentially folks who are left out of the conversation, and as you talk about, broadening the circle from an economic point of view and from a political point of view, and also, i think, it's needed from a narrative point of view. >> i couldn't agree with you more. and i have immense respect for you, for putting yourself so into this, to product a product that is a combination of image and sound and all the things that this clearly is. so congratulations and thank you. >> thanks, dylan. thanks for having me.

>> doug levitt, it's called "the greyhound diaries." now you know what it is. coming up here on "hardball," why it is not so fun being newt these days. chris matthews with the play-by-play on last night's gop debate. but first, it's toure's turn for a daily rant. he's back in just a moment to do a little rendition of, what is it, "grandma got run over by a health insurance monopoly," or something like that. it's not the bayer aspirin you know. it's different. first, it's been re-engineered with micro-particles. second, it enters the bloodstream fast, and rushes relief to the site of your tough pain. the best part? it's proven to relieve pain twice as fast as before. bayer advanced aspirin. test how fast it works for you. love it, or get your money back. is there a prize in there? oh, there's a prize, all right. is it a robot? no.

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well, toure back with some words about a journalism great that we lost this week. hi, toure. >> hi, dylan. never, ever have i seen anyone outside the field of battle

march towards certain death with as much courage, character, and aplumb as christopher hitchens did. he died yesterday at age 62 after a battle with cancer. and while his heart may have stopped, his spirit was unbroken and unbowed by the big "c." hitchens was a great writer and a necessary public intellectual. one of his best books was called "god is not great." he was an atheist. and you might think the sudden proximity with death would shake that and make you suddenly need to believe in god, because what can be scarier is that the reaper is around the corner and realizing when death comes for you, you turn to meat, get stuffed in a box, and that's that. but hitchens did not find god because of cancer. he remained the man he had always been. the foothold of which was a great writer. his pieces on cancer were powerful. he wrote, "i want to do death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye." and he did. and i imagine that when the grim

reaper finally showed up, hitchens did not try to escape or bargain his way out, but shook the reaper's hand and said, all right, old man, let's go. we have lost an important voice and a peerless reporter, when famously wrote about the uselessness of torture as a military technique after allowing himself to be waterboarded, thus taking p participatory journalism to a new self-sacrificial level. hitchens ease mind was like a bulging muscle. it was the source of so many quick-witted rejoinders. so many turns of phrase. it took him intrepidly to war-torn countries around the globe to speak with leaders, rebels and commoners. it made him a man's man and a throwback to the ernest hemingway/norman mahler strain of writers who are can tankerous, world traveling, and crucially hard living. i once had a cigarette with

hitch after we did the tina brown show. i don't smoke, i just watched him inhale a few and listen to him be genius. it came so easy to him. the world will not be the same without hitch. >> very well said. and i'm not going to add words to it, because it will simply confuse the issue. but i do want to take advantage of the fact that i haven't seen you in a few weeks, because you ran away from us and hid. i don't know why. >> i've never hidden from you. >> was somebody mean around here? was it me? >> well, you were a little mean in the bradley manning discussion, but i'll never hold that against you. no, i'm still doing book tour stuff. still trying to promote my thing, so. >> all right. and finally, of the three christmas songs, now christmas is a week away, you heard your choices, "the six industries of christmas," "grandma got run over by a health insurance monopoly," and "rudolph the greedy