hello from new york. i'm chris hayes. we have congressman john sarbanes, democrat from maryland. zephyr teachout, associate professor of law at fordham university school of law and former chief economist and economic policy advisor to vice president joe biden -- howard dean's campaign. jared bernstein, and errol errol host of "inside city hall." all right. you probably heard by now singer

whitney houston died last night in beverly hills at age 48. born in newark, gospel singer cece houston. one of the if not the greatest voices of the age. she would sell more than 55 million records over her career. over the last decade she battled drug addiction, often uncomfortably in the public life. she was found yesterday afternoon in a room in the beverly hills hilton. the cause of death is unknown. i was -- i heard it the radio last night, whitney houston died. i had would thoughts. one was just how awful, terribly sad it is. then i back to being -- being in the bronx as an elementary school student when i was 8 or 9 years old and give a shout out to tiffany, renee, sonya to which i used to jump rope on the playground of ps 83 in the east bronx. >> you jumped rope with them? >> i did jump rope with them.

>> maybe we will do it on the program. and for some reason we went every day, we would sing "greatest love of all." the children of the future, this was our -- like our sort of anthem as 8 or 9-year-olds. chefs a massively iconic figure. and, you know, it is hard to know how to react. clearly it it happens, there is this sort of -- arc we have seen people have tremendous success and fema and that brings with it or facilitates personal demons that everybody has. and millions of people have outside of the public life. but to watch it happen unfold is sort of extra tragic, i think. >> absolutely. being a little older than you, i was sitting in graduate school listening to her his album. home wax when i am supposed to be doing my homework and work. over and over and over again until the grooves war down. i would tell my friends her second album should be her

greatest hits album. it was this good, that important. for me at least she was one of these people where when i was growing up the way my family -- there was so much music in the house. way we would talk about people like aretha franklin and james brown, they would just be referred to by their first name. being a kid, being really young, i thought they were part of the family. whitney houston was kind of at that level i felt like i knew her. she was a year younger than me. i certainly spent many hours with her on some level. many years later when my son was born and was an infant i stayed up all night and they were running bobby brown marathon, first reality show i ever watched. and i woke up my wife and said she has a real problem. whitney, my friend, has a real problem. you could see it back then. >> something about the intimacy of music. i was thinking about this because the songs i was listening to while the -- the night that -- first night my daughter was born in the hospital when she had fallen asleep and i was too wired to get to sleep and the songs in the iphone at that point have this profound and tremendous

resonance. there is something about music there is an intimacy to it because you -- appreciate it in these very private tender ways and let it into yourself. there is a connection you have to -- >> i think that's exactly how i hear whitney. when i heard her about her death, the first thing i heard was music on the tv, whitney houston. i began to smile. they hadn't said anything about what happened. i realized that that voice which, by the way, is genetically linked to dionne warwick and franklin, it was a natural voice. so evocative for me. i'm just really going to miss it. >> tremendous -- you mentioned being "being bobby brown," the reality show, the other thought i had, there's something about the savageness to maybe use a slightly hyperbolic word about the reality show era.

and about celebrity in the time of reality show era. there is a certain delight and purian interest that's now you willty straighted into an industry over watching people who are in the public eye, who are struggling with tremendous, tremendous problems. kind of come apart in front of everyone. and i wonder if this is an opportunity to put a little bit of a check on that. right? because -- we do have their -- completely a thirst for it but i don't think it is a thirst we should be cultivating. and it is hard to be the arbiter or policeman of culture because people will walk in and produce the television that people want. but it does seem to me there is something about being -- being in the public eye and struggling with demons in this era that is sort of -- specific under the microscope. in a particularly acute way. in a way i think is probably unprecedented or maybe that's naive. >> i think that that particular show, "being bobby brown,"

showing the family members, entourage and the places they stay and talk about, it was fairly early in that era. there wasn't a lot of editing. for whatever reason the story they chose to tell you could tell it was unvarnished and real. camera would reveal a lot of things anyway. it was uncomfortable. i remember sitting there at 3:00 in the morning and everybody else in the house was asleep and i'm watching it and feeling like uncomfortable and i shouldn't be seeing this. >> i heard about this because sometimes when great artists die sushgs learn about it because you start to hear their music being played on the radio. i was listening to the radio. and there was like -- five or six songs in a row. then you realize something is happening here. and obviously it is a tragedy in her case but to your point, it goes to this question of sort of your private life versus public life. such awn tense intimacy now in terms of how your private life gets presented to the outside

world. and how do people handle that. you can talk about in terms of the public figure, in theory, should be better prepared for this, right, because they jumped into it. but you can also talk about how that line between public and private affects everybody in that -- particularly with social networking and what happens online. >> absolutely. i have a friend who is -- friend who is a grad student at prince ton university and is doing some fascinating research about this sort of -- social network and digital lives of teenagers, particular teenagers in harlem. and -- they -- the line between public and private is completely eroded. if you have 4,000 follow others facebook and you say, you know, i hooked up with so-and-so or into so-and-so, so-and-so at a party, that's being broadcast. i mean, that's -- everybody knows that. there is a feeling to the whole thing that it is harder and harder to achieve privacy. and -- in the digital age. >> i associate whitney houston

with placing my self between the two of you in high school. and that particular sort of anxiety that comes along with the gaze in high school the awareness of other people looking at and you thinking about how we are putting ourselves or putting someone in this permanent gaze and amount of energy you have to maintain to protect yourself against that. then i don't know -- your question is an important one. what do you do about that? >> what do you do? >> yeah. >> technology. the fact that you can be that interconnected, interacting with the culture in ways hard to imagine that -- >> i'm going to -- >> not inevitable. >> i'm not going -- sound like a conservative for a moment which is i actually think norms are important. i actually think that -- reclaiming the norm of privacy is actually an important thing for us to go about doing the work of. however that's done, however you reconstruct a norm, i think it is important but i do think there is something about the -- way in which privacy has been eroded. so deeply, whether it is just

the nature. >> it is not like some hurricane comes through, though. we all have locks on our front door for a reason. everybody understands that. people have to make a choice. you go back and even like to the jazeera, people would get caught in an addiction and have tragic headlines like we are going to see. on the other hand, there were always people -- these people for whom that was not true. >> there's something about this interesting to me which is that you didn't really lock your door against some of this stuff. that's the thing that gets to me. there is a level of violation of your privacy you have nothing to do with. some of it is as simple as, you know, marketers figuring out things about you might not necessarily want them to be ping you about. >> yes. but there -- i guess i want to echo what chris is saying. suggesting that there isn't a total technological determination from here. how we use the roads. i mean, thinking about what that men's, there is a way in which for a while at least that there's a tendency to say the kids are using the internet, they will use it the way they

are using it instead of engaging parents and adults in the cultural interaction. >> you have to teach kids coping mechanisms, right, boundaries. so that they can -- they can sort of take on this effort of -- kind of policing their world, their privacy themselves. if they don't learn the skill set up front at a certain point it will be too late. >> all of news the media to think about what -- what that line is between public and private and who is subject to the public in and how we preserve some ideal of dignity. that's something very important and lost. >> you told us about your jump roping theory. >> talk about dignity. >> all right. the other big news is -- news of the week from the campaign trail and other aspects of our public life coming up right after this. [ degeneres ] what's more beautiful than a covergirl?

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now, that's progressive. call or click today. ♪ i get so emotional baby >> two pieces of good news from mitt romney after an absolutely brutal for his campaign. won maine's republican caucus with 39% of the vote. eking out a victory with ron paul who came in second with 36% of the vote. there's about 5,000 votes cast total. a little more. it is not necessarily a whopping victory in the grand scheme of american politics with 300 million people. romney also won the conservative political action convention straw poll with 38%. major props from a group not overwhelmingly endorsed him and his campaign so far, that being conservative activists.

rick santorum finished in second place with 31%. ron paul who in the last two cdpac straw polls finished last with 12% be behind newt gingrich. rick santorum shows considerable signs of strength. this is, i think, probably the topic of discussion inside the romney camp all week. new national poll shows him with a 15 point lead over mitt romney. it is the first time santorum led national poll. one factor in santorum's surge is the support of a man named foster freeze. hi no idea who he was just a few weeks ago but now a fair amount about him. freese is a mutual frund make nature from jackson, wyoming. as of december, freese donated $331,000 to the red, white and blue fund, pro-santorum super pac and subsequent donations in 2012 have not been disposed. friday freese introduced santorum at cpac and he opened with a joke. >> a bar a couple doors down.

recently a conservative, liberal, and a moderate walked into the bar. the bartender says hi, mitt. >> when you tell a joke and you don't get laughs, just start laughing yourself and usually people will go with you. one. most interesting and i think unintended consequences of the super pac era is so far people like freese or shelton adelson can pump money into the pac and keep people like romney from walking down the race. playing a major role in the general election. particularly now that president obama's campaign announced that it would no longer be dis couraging donors from contributing to the super pac supporting the president's re-election, priorities usa action. this was big news the beginning of the week because the obama

campaign obviously has in 2008 discouraged the super pac didn't exist as a legal entity but discouraged to be contributing to outside groups. there has been a reversal. they say jim messina said he didn't want to dash not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind their back with so much at stake. we can't allow for two sets of rules, democrats can't unilaterally disarm. this is the way the world works. congressman sarbanes, we are going to talk about the way that you are raising money for your campaign in just a bit. i want to get your reaction to both the white house's announcement earlier in the week and what you are seeing develop in terms of this billionaire industrial complex in the gop primary field. >> look, i can't say i'm surprised with what the white house did because you do get this dynamic where you feel like if the other side is playing the game by certain rules you have to play by those rules, too. or else you will end up on the wrong end of the, you know, contest at the end of the day. that's the problem. this super pac dynamic is just

leaning to this -- it is an arms war basically. and now you are getting these private citizens that are sort of in the background and they are going to -- going to be pulling the strings. this guy freese, in effect, you -- you are picking a candidate and it is like owning a sports team. right? what they are going to do is have their own candidates because they will the ones that bankroll their -- their fortunes through a super pac model. where does it end. we have to look at different ways you can push back. a lot of this comes from the citizens united case. a lot of it was in place before that. special influence over our politics, something long standing and people are increasingly upset about. >> i think bit citizens united open it is tap. and -- just like when you open the tap the first stuff to come out is a certain girly strange

stuff. that's like foster freese and adelson. you know, these nutty millionaires. >> i don't think they would call themselves nutty but continue. >> no. what i mean is -- hiring gladiators to do their battle. these are individual extremely rich people. and that's troubling. >> right. >> but when -- >> less troubling -- >> than what is going to happen the next cycle, what's already happening at the state level with super pacs, homebuilders getting involved. and -- where you actually see goldman sachs and bank of america figuring out how to take the money. >> right. what we are seeing now i think -- really good point. seeing these individuals as opposed to using this vessel. much more than organized interest. i actually think that -- just to give provocation here, there is a way in which the -- the -- sheldon adelson and freese in this race is making it more possible for gop primary voters

to express their actual preference. the reason is that it is making it impossible for romney to simply just lock the race up and dry up the money from his opponents and the longer it plays out the longer there is an opportunity through these primary contests for a gop base that does not like mitt romney to tell the party establishment which wants to coalesce around mitt romney, between don't like mitt romney, we want another nominee. there is a bizarre consequence there. >> i think that's -- bizarre. and it is not the kind of thing that i -- i think we are going to get a lot of. the way this is going to evolve is precisely the way john and zephyr said. it links up to inequality issue. for years political scientists talked about this problem where if too much income gets concentrated at the top of the scale, you end up having a linkage between that kind of distortionary and inequality and excessive buying of the politics. so i think there is a linkage here between underlying economic

trends and very problem we are talking about. >> here again, this is -- this is not entirely new. you take -- two new york examples, one being the billionaire mayor of the city who -- three campaigns spend well over $100 million. he himself is the candidate. it is his money. apples to apple. >> no way to conceive of how you would regulate that. that's a harder thing i think to -- >> good news in that case is he barely won the last campaign. money doesn't always determine it. you know, using your metaphor in sports owners. you can throw a lot of money at the yankees and say -- which they do year after year after year but don't always win. the second case, this goes on in every state in the union. casino interests and a man named donald trump went up and basically made contributions to almost everybody worth making contributions to our state legislature for the specific reason that they wanted to stop gambling from coming to new york. it worked for many, many, many years. i'm sure you can find similar examples across the country.

this is not an entirely new problem. >> congressman john sarbanes is undertaking, i think a novel experiment in how to go about funding a campaign what modeled maybe solutions and problems we are talking about. tell us about that after we take this break.

with all due deference to separation of powers, the supreme court veersed a century of law i believe will open the flood gates for special interests. including foreign corporations, to span without limit in our elections. >> that's the infamous shaking of the head from samm alito. you are up for re-election.

tell us about how you are doing, your fund-raising for your re-election and how it fits in with your vision for how we are going to solve some of these problem. >> a lot of attention on the super pacs at the presidential level because that's where we have seen activity recently. but if you start looking at the potential for super pacs to influence congressional races, i mean, you know, it is going to be torrential basically. so the question becomes what do you do as a rank and file member of congress to prepare yourself to kind of push back if the super pac comes at and you typically they will do this in the last stages of the campaign. the last six weeks. right? so if they come in and drop a half million dollars on a television buy, you can't really push back by going to traditional donors because they tend to be maximumed out at that point. what you immediate to build is grassroots donor network. the grassroots financing. so you can tap into that and activate it in those final stages. when you are not running for

president -- it is hard are -- when you are running for president it is harder to get to that viral going, building a network of thousands of people to step up and give $5, $15. you have to work at. >> it we are not going say a sarbanes will i am video at any point. >> i started thinking about how could i do this? how could i discipline myself to really push the envelope and try to build that grassroots network? i took the model, fair elections now act. this is a piece of legislation that has been around for a couple of sessions. basically it says that if a candidate can recruit a certain number of grassroots donors, a thousand or 1,500 people, then they get rewarded. those are people that give $100 or less. right? grassroots. they get rewarded by getting access to dollars out of a public fund to help underwrite their campaign. well, it is not law. we don't have this in place. i started thinking why not take that model and demonstrate it in my own campaign. so what we did is we went to a group of traditional donors and

asked them to create a special fund and then i pledged not to touch that money basically restrict my access to it until i could go build the grassroots network. so i sort of put this burden on myself and in my campaign to figure out how do you reach the grassroots donors and establish that broad support for the future? >> now, we should say, i mean, my understand sing your district has been a democrat district for a very long time. i don't know who -- how competitive you are imagining your race is but i imagine it is not going to be as competitive as -- not in the 50/50 district. >> my district is not a front line district. >> right. >> some sense, though, that gives me an opportunity to experiment with something new and try something different and my view is if i have the opportunity to try something different, particularly when you are talking about grassroots financing, then i have the responsibility to try. i don't pass judgment on any of my colleagues who are in these very, very tough races where they have to reach out and find the money where they can.

right? but i want to try something different here. so we set up a whole approach to this. we got a grassroots donor website. you know. it talks about all of this. and the idea is to model a different way of -- you talked a moment ago about sort of -- keeping some of these candidates in the race and who might not otherwise be there and maybe that's a good thing but the thing -- it is a good thing coming from financing from these very special interests. you can -- achieve the same goal through grassroots financing. if that's available to keep candidates going, that's more democratic. that's what the average person wants to see. this gives them ownership. average person in a grassroots financing approach really gets ownership of the political possibles. which they lost these day. >> i'm fascinated by the first point you made which i was not anticipate which is to phrase this approach and deeply pragmatic terms. about what you actually -- how you actually deal with the

specter of the super pac era because that's something -- the point you make about -- we tend to focus so much on the presidential level. but at the end of the day, there's so much money at the presidential level that stuff does end up being a wash. even if you get $100,000 from goldman sachs employees, they are going to get more access for sure. when you are raising half a billion, at the congressional level, some one drops a half a million dollars congressional race in a place where -- at time is not that expensive, that's massive. that's massively distortion. >> it happened in the last election. we don't have to make this up. we have examples in 2010 cycle of where congressional candidates really got ambushed in the final days by big money and they could not respond. >> of course, the big mondayin interest i think a lot of people are worried about and can -- marshal a lot of money into our political system, big banks. big news this week with the mortgage settlement between the big banks and states really needs. coming up next. ♪

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unitedhealthcare. for more than 16 month it is obama administration together with attorneys general from all 50 states has been negotiating in a mortgage trial settlement with the biggest banks. thursday president obama announce ad deal. >> we have reached a landmark settlement with the nation's largest banks that will speed relief to the hardest-hit homeowners and some of the most abusive practices of the mortgage industry and begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that has left so much damage in its wake. >> agreement release it is banks from liability for certain abuses of foreclosure process. in exchange the banks will provide homeowners and state and federal governments at least $25 million in cash and credit over the next three kreers.

the banks have also agreed to clean up their services practices about which more in a moment and several democratic attorneys general signed on to the deal despite initial concerns that banks were given too much immunity. the only hold-out was oklahoma attorney general scott pruitt, estate's right republican in the perry tradition. president obama called thursday's agreement the largest joint federal state settlement in state's history but is $25 billion large enough? the 1998 tobacco agreement is worth about $350 billion in todays dollars. this is a stunning number. $750 billion in underwatt moeer mortgage get. compared to the home water assistance coming out of congress $25 billion looks like a good deal. you were just shaking your head. when i was -- when i asked the question rhetorically, was $25 billion enough, let me just quickly say for people that

basically about $20 billion of that $25 billion is going to be principal reduction. actual write-downs on thetle t value of the principal of the loan and principal reductions had -- lot of people had been calling for principal reductions from the beginning of the crisis as the key way of helping the deleveraging process of getting recovery in both -- human terms and getting people to be able to stay in their homes but also macro economically. so that part of it seems good. the question is, is it sufficient and you seem skeptical of the settlement. i want to hear your feelings about it. >> there's a bunch of different ways you can look at the settlement. what sit for? what sit supposed to do? if you look at it does it help those that are victims? a little bit. does it deter future abuse in this? probably not. i mean, the -- basic estimate is that it is $2,000 the banks have to pay per loan for fraudulently claiming that they had read the documents, knew that they owned

the home, were ready to foreclosure. i teach property law. this is a basic rule of law violation. and if it is -- if the banks can get off with jpmorgan, one of the most powerful organizations in world history, says okay, just $2,000, we don't have to pay attention if we are fraudulently foreclosuring on somebody, that's cheap. a political mat their attorney generals are best hope for really pushing against the sort of current al capone, jpmorgan and i was hoping for more. >> couple of points. first of all, i think that both the way we are talking about it and the way the president actually talked about it, it is not quite right in the following sense. this is one piece of many, many interventions in the housing market to frame this up as, you know, is this going to solve the problem? it is not intended to solve the problem. it is a small piece. by the way, just on the numbers, i want to get one point across here. on the numbers, the way the thing is written -- i agree with a lot of what you are say

especially on the 2000 foreclosure. but the way this thing is set up, it has built-in leverage. that $20 billion you mentioned, it is up to $40 billion. i'm not saying that -- let me -- one final point. i used to be a member of if housing team back there in the white house days. one other point. here's what's key about this thing. this is the first housing policy to come across the policy transom from the perspective of the banks and lenders. they have to do the write-downs. the reason why so many of these programs have been underwhelm sing because they have been voluntary from the perspective. >> let me just say one thing in response to that and bring in attorney general bo biden who is part of this. enforcement mechanism, when we tell them they have to do things, it is unclear they will do them unless there is a strong enforcement act. the servicers have ignored all sorts of legal injunctions

throughout. in fact, the law said you have to properly pass the title along and they didn't do that. enforce many mechanism does matter. the other thing i say is the leverage is -- distinct. right? this was -- the banks were over the -- over a barrel. the question is whether they were pulled -- given -- if they were rescued from the own sins prematurely without extracting the maximum power, that's a question i want to pose to delaware attorney general biden. he has been an integral part in negotiating and on the program critical of the way the negotiations were going. one of the democrats that held out for greater accountability from banks. thank you so much for joining us. >> well, thank you for having me on, chris. >> i think -- hopefully you have been hearing what we just said so i want to get your response to the deal and -- some of the -- the -- criticisms that have been leveraged towards it. criticism of both of your guests. spot-on. this is a first step.

it is a belated first step. but my -- my goal here all along has been, snyderman and others. make sure that this is not just the first step. there's much, much more that needs to be done. much more accountability that needs to be had. more investigations that need to be continued. in missouri it did not get covered as much as it should have bunt the attorney general in missouri sued -- not sued -- sued like criminally indicted the ceo and president of a company that made linda green fame us to many americans who helped perpetrate this fraud which i call it the professor did, i think it is one of the greatest frauds in the court when you -- sign tens and tens of thousands of false affidavits across courts, across this country, and docked with central to that and you criminally indicted the ceo and president. i think you will see more attorneys general pursue the criminal route now that this -- this very narrow and as we try

to narrow the settlement to just the servicing conduct. >> i don't want to get too far in the weeds but what the heck. what you were -- you were -- critical of the -- you were critical of the settlement as proposed in earlier iterations of it. you would not sign on to that you were satisfied enough in and had not been crossed you were willing to sign on to this agreement. >> well, there had to be more robust principal reduction and had to be the capacity to re-fi, too. out of the $25 billion which, as your guest just said, you know the $20 billion, $25 billion, $20 billion of it credits back to the banks what they should have been doing or trying to get them to do already. immediate to be sufficient enough program where you had real true $17 billions in principal reduction but ability form understudded underwater, on-time borrowers to re-fi.

number two, we need to make sure that we maintain our investigative capacity both criminal and civil. and that's what eric snyderman and i and katherine cortez in nevada need to focus on. we need to continue the securitization investigations that were under way as well as the other criminal conduct, sending from original nation all the way through securitization. it had to be very narrowly towered. the third thing is that -- you can't forget the service members involved here. these banks have -- jpmorganchase violate ad law that's been around since the civil war called thor ismen men civil relief act. we send warriors to battle, they shouldn't worry about what's happening on the home front. they shouldn't be worried about whether or not they are being foreclosed upon. but for a captain, marine captain in south carolina, no one would have known about the fact that jpmorganchase was violating the servicemen relief

act. extend benefits to active duty component thaents they previously hadn't had and make sure that you don't force families to separate and claim hardships and in order to have them have -- be able to have a discussion with their bank about some terms of modification that's short of a foreclosure. >> delaware attorney general biden. if i can ask you to stick with us. the employee of the month isss... the new spark card from capital one. spark miles gives me the most rewards of any small business credit card. the spark card earns double miles... so we really had to up our game. with spark, the boss earns double miles on every purchase, every day.

♪ we have delaware attorney general beau biden on the line here. zephyr teachout spent a lot of time speaking about these issues. you have a question. >> you mentioned original nation. this is -- i think important in understanding the settlement. are any original nation claims covered at all where -- >> explain that -- what that means. this -- the chain here is very complicated.

>> so -- in the sort of -- crudely in the steps of the chain there is initially a mortgage that is set up. and -- bunch of people with potentially -- predatorin lending, setting up mortgages that people can't afford or don't understand. that mortgage is packaged, sliced, diced, sold, and then the servicers who back in days of -- might have been the same person that originated the mortgage have -- managing the mortgage potentially foreclosuring on the mortgage. we understand that robo sign sing covered by the deal. servicers then -- servicers, robo signing practices are covered. i was trying to understand if any origin any origination fraud was covered. >> some is released. california's gone a long way to reserving much of the false claims ability to pursue

origination. one of the systemic problems in the segment, one of the problems i had, it is that it does nothing and jerry bernstein talked a lot about this. it does nothing to change the fundamental incentive structure for the servicers. right now servicers are incentivize and to foreclosure. they now that whether or not a borrower is paying them or not, they have to forward the money the investor they are servicing the note for. after three, six months of the servicer not receiving the check from the borrower, they exercise the right to foreclosure because they know for sure they are going to get the first $3,000, $6,000 off of the foreclosure. it is noninterest to the borrowers. not innocent interest of the investor. that's why this is so far out of whack. have not tried to align the interests to leverage the best deal for both investor community and as wells the borrower. that's one of the flaws i have seen and focused on in the settlement. a servicer out there has no skin in the game. as you said, they are not only not equipped to do it do it,

they don't have the employees to do it, trying to staff up, but also incentivize financially to foreclosure. >> in their interest. >> that's why you see the -- >> attorney general -- >> that's why the foreclosure prices is what it is. >> err >>. >> i had a macro economic question which is isn't the big goal at the end of the day to sort of remove some of the uncertainty? it might be emotionally and politically or even legally satisfied to see a crooked servicer get thrown in jail and criminally indicted but at the end of the day, we want to get past this. right? so there will be something resembling housing market so people can get mortgages again. >> well -- well, macro economic questions to be directed at jerod. uncertainty i'm concerned about are they don't know whether or not they are going to be able to stay in their house and hanging on by their fingernails and not knowing whether or not they will be able to stay in their home and provide for their families.

banks will be okay. in fact, i think the banks embrace this deal. and -- the so i -- you know, i'm worried about the economy and worried about the housinging market and i know the housing mark set central to the recovery and a step in the right direction. the certainty that i'm -- uncertainty i'm focused on is the american people whether or not they will be dealt with fairly and in -- straightforwardly. if you go -- in my state, up and down my state, republicans and democrats, they are just not being dealt with in a straightforward fashion. >> delaware attorney general beau biden, thank you so much for joining thus morning. appreciate it. >> thanks for having me on, chris. >> more on the housing market and certainty, elusive certainty.

♪ i found myself >> the sound of whitney houston. sadly, tragically dead at the age of 48. we were just talking about the

mortgage settlement. jared bernstein, something you wanted to say. i want to address something you said about certainty. the reason the incentive the banks have and the thing everybody on the financial side wants is certainty, then want to close the deal in the past and look forward and not backward. similar to the bush torture regime. and -- the -- bank stocks all ticked up the news of the settlement. clearly from the perspective of the certainty and wall street, they think this gives them certainty. >> there are a couple of things. one, i just really want to make sure that we have a shoutout for the work that beau biden and eric snyderman have done on this. >> both of which have been here as guest. >> that's a good point. >> i see the connection. and -- they -- they have -- it is -- because of them that this settlement became much more narrow focused exclusively on -- the servicing issues that you mentioned. i'm not saying it is perfect. i'm saying that threes guys are dead set on going after the bigger fish here, including the securitization.

slicing and dicing and bundling. they are pretty crusading dudes when it comes to this work. i'm really -- interested in seeing where it is going. >> in terms of the origination, one useful way to think about it is wholesale and retail. tainted pet food and -- the pet food was sold to you at some pet shop, right, the pet shop is sort of a penny ante you go after the pet shop that sold it to you. what you want to get at is where the did the food get tainted in the factory and who knew about that and was passing along the tainted food. that's the origination part of it. >> i think it is important for all journalists to know, miss know manier to call it a mortgage settlement. collection foreclosure settleme

settlement. >> there's $4 million to $6 million potential foreclosures out there that have been bottled up while the settlement has been worked out. right? so now you got the banks who are going to -- they are going to be off to the races again in terms of pursuing these foreclosures. they have a settlement which is supposed to make them sort of more sensitive to loan modifications and so forth. when you talk to housing counselors who are on the ground, they will tell you that these big banks basically have the schizophrenia. there is one side to the house that's supposed to be working on the loan modification. there's the other side of the house that's going full steam ahead. >> often dual track. >> left hand and right hand are not working together. whether this settlement can improve that, i think, is -- >> dual track sing part of the settlement. >> it is. economic dawn in america is dependent upon working tout housing market. we will talk about the recovery that finally seems actually genuinely here for the first time right after this break.

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hello from new york. i'm chris hayes. with me this horng, i have congressman john sarbanes, democrat from maryland. associate professor of law at fordham university school of law. jared bernstein. errol louis. i wouldn't buy or sell stock based on my macro economic pronouncements but i think it is fair to say the nation is experiencing a recovery. according to a new report the country has lowered household

debt which is really key in the wake of a financial crisis and what is called technically a balanced recession for households to restore their balance sheets. that's reduce the amount of household debt. companies are hiring again and almost three years after getting 49.5 billion from both the bush and obama administrations both we should know the bush and obama administrations gm is back to being the world's bestselling automaker. so what is driving the recovery? why not? clint eastwood's much talked about ad offered a powerful argument for why this happened. >> all that matters now is what's ahead. how to come from behind. how did we come together? how do we win? detroit is showing us it can be done. what's true about them is true about all of us. this country can be knocked out in one punch. we get up again. the country will hear the roar.

it is the second half and the second half is about to begin. >> i love how simply iconic that ad is. yeah. jared bernstein, you were in -- you were in the -- in the war room, as were, when everything was falling apart and when a lot of these were being made and auto bailout is so important for this reason. it was signature example and when you talk to tea party activists they talk about the bank bailout but talk as much about the auto bailout as they talk about the bailout. that was as polarizing and unpopular. more so. >> worse than the t.a.r.p. >> many and that was because the right really beat the drums about how this is a bailout from the unions and the chrysler creditor, bond holders got screwed over. how important is it for the story of that economic intervention to be a success story? how -- how important is it for our understanding of what this president has done with the econy? important. i think that conveying tt

importance to the public is a real challenge. by listening to that, remembering the days that i was trying to message this from the white house and i thought man, why don't we just get clint eastwood. >> on the recovery zblakt west wing. recovery act. i think that the -- the unpopularity of the bailout which is the auto bailout was link flood, i believe that -- in terms of the others, it is beginning to fade and it is -- i think that it is because -- it is happening at the same time that you begin to see kind of the upturn in the economy you were talking about earlier. and as things get better, everything starts to -- lot of policy decisions start to look a lot smarter. when things start to get better and then get worse, then those policy decisions don't look so good. the narrative here, i think it actually links up to reality, which is, in my view the best kind of narratives, the policy interventions that we did at the federal reserve that were trying to do more of, are beginning to -- not only take hold but

beginning to show some self-sustaining attributes in the economy. what's happened before is we have gotten the unemployment side and little bit of the income side and then -- if it -- hiccup or some kind of shock in your -- back to where you are started, looking for self-sustaining recovery that gives the economy a lift, kind of escape philosophy if i would lack so far. we are not there so far but a lot closer. >> i wanted to just ask you, you can call these bailouts, right, where you can look at them in some instances as what a public private partnership is all about. and this sense, when you talk about the auto industry, right, it is about the public sector realizing that this was -- an important enough industry that you can't let it fail and stepping in and building that partnership and now i think we are seeing the benefits of it and we ought to bring -- you don't overdo this. you have to be discriminate being you build these partnerships so that they were but if we approach other things

in our economy that way i think we can get a lasting effect. >> you seem skeptical of that argument. >> no. i think that's exactly right. i'm skeptical of public/private partnerships. that's the -- in the short term, four years, two years, there may -- i was very critical of both bailouts including the auto bailout because it supports, you know, a fundamentally -- wait, wait. let her explain that. that's -- that's a very -- intense thing to say about a policy this man was -- all right. i want to you explain and it then give you a chance to respond. >> no. i mean, i this i it supports the economy and which there are limited number of -- centralized powerful players who have a close relationship with government. and -- you know, there are reasons to do that in the short term. long terp, true will youly, truly robust stable -- like

long-term stability depends on true competition, true decentralization and -- >> here's where we are ---er with not disagreeing. here is where -- the differences are in short term versus long term. breeze by those words. in this context here is what that means. you are right. i was there. i remember -- you know, being in the oval with the president and the -- advisers actually thinking through how we were going to deal with exactly this question. and both sides of that argument were in that room. and -- we were in the heart of the worst recession since the great depression where two of the three major auto companies and their supply chains which probably would have brought down the third one would have been liquidated. this had never happened before. and it may never happen again. so it is the uniqueness of that situation. the problem with the argument is that if you somehow extrapolate that and we should do this all the time, do this when the economy is fine, we should -- save and bail out, no, it is only in this -- you know, kind of 100-year flood situation that

intervention is relevant. and i think that -- it is actually -- by avoiding that kind of liquidation that has been a real plus for the economy. >> i want to talk about why now a little bit because i think that's one of the interesting dynamics here is that we had -- there has been a variety of policies the federal government has overseen and federal reserve tried to get us out of this awful, awful recession, great recession. call it what you will. resonance. why are we turning the corner at this moment? what is it that kicked in or natural progression? i love to eat. i love hanging out with my friends. i have a great fit with my dentures. i love kiwis. i've always had that issue with the seeds getting under my denture. super poligrip free -- it creates a seal of the dentures in my mouth. even well-fitting dentures let in food particles. super poligrip is zinc free. with just a few dabs, it's clinically proven to seal out more food particles so you're more comfortable and confident while you eat.

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i have seen a lot of tough eras, downturns in my life. and sometimes it is best to lie

down and watch from the couch. can't win them all. right? "a" for effort, everybody. because this country can't be knocked out with one punch. sometimes it takes two and you feel like oh, wow, that hurt. that's what we do. we find a way to say this industry didn't work out. let's kick back and eat some coney dogs and wait for another one. yeah. it is halftime, america. good game that's a shot across mitt romney who did write an op-ed and said let dproyt go bankrupt. points to the fact there will be a political liability to that -- to the extent the auto bailout looked like it worked. there will be a real political liability mitt romney to have that headline attached to his

name. one of the things that's been interesting to see is that normal laws of political gravity have been suspended, it seems, since the republicans took over the house insofar as just there's usually a divided set of incentives. if things are getting better you have to stand for re-election when you go back to your district. up want things to get better from that perspective. when the opposite party is in the white house you don't want that member of that party to be able to take credit for the recovery and be re-elected as president. it seems to me like the -- house gop operated solely thinking about the latter for a long time. do you see that at all changing? do you see your colleagues worrying about what they will go back and tell their constituents back at home if we don't have a -- if we don't have a more robust recovery? >> absolutely. i think they are getting very conflicted because -- look,

the -- the approval rating in congress is at an all-time low, 10%. you go to a work where 10% of americans approve of. when your approval rating -- when -- when the institution is held in such low regard, then it becomes very important for individual members of congress to make sure they are in communication with their own constituents and that there is a narrative there that works. that they are trying hard that they want to see the fortunes of their constituents improve and so forth. and so that should make you root for economic recovery. of course, we are in an election season. and a narrative the republicans want to have in place is things are still terrible and this is just a blip and so forth. that creates a lot of tension in -- seems to me in terms of the narrative they are trying to present to their own constituents. i'm happy to see them squirming like this. >> how do you -- what do you think their response will be if we getself are a more months of

p 300,000 plus? what's the story they will tell? >> they will say it is not enough. they will say that we didn't have to go through this terrible period the president made it worse, all that kind of stuff. the fact of the matter is that if -- the public feels that we are -- beginning to move in a sustainable way, in a positive direction, think i think that will be very critical to the election. and the judgments people make. >> one point is that -- during -- when things were really bad in the economy, one of the messages from the white house was that things could have been worse. and nobody really knows what to make of that. i think it is exactly parallel to the other side. they say, well, things should be better. no, what people recognize is either things are getting better or getting worse, they are getting better. >> zephyr, you looked at the political economy how finance works and things like that. and i -- what's interesting to me is as we think about recovery, right, and detroit is a perfect example, where the banks are a perfect example, will is a -- cyclical problem,

right, which is a cyclical recession and long-term secular structural problems which is -- how is power concentrated in the economy and easy for incumbents to use the power of the state to defend themselves from competition and how equitable is the economy in terms of how much of profits go to capital versus wages. and i guess my fear about the recovery is that we can have a -- a cyclical improvement or recovery but we go back to an economy that had all of the structural features that were -- there for a long time beforehand and how do you -- see us coming out of this in terms of how much we addressed those structural features? >> yeah. clearly have. obviously not happy about any recovery. it does give spaib space for -- to agree because now we can then talk about these. i think that this ties into the money in politics conversation. real first money in politics performs in this country antitrust. john sherman talked the first antitrust act as a charter of

liberty. and in political terms that we need to 23ig out ways to decentralize economic power in order to both maintain competitive market and then also have, you know, a truly competitive political market. so i think these things tie up in a real way. i think that the -- people in the country are aware of that. >> the things are not going to change than fundamentally in terms of getting good policy over the long term. until you find way of getting money out of politics. because special interests, i mean, you said don't use talking points. there's only one way to say this. special interests have too much influence in washington. and the result is that they -- they take legislation that is drafted to be in the public interest and they hijack it and they very quickly turn it into something that satisfies their own goals and as long as that's the system that's in place, we are going to get the same result. >> of course that's a very difficult story to tell. very much like the store write

of what would happen to the economy if we 00 done x, y, z. the other big issue i think where some of your colleagues will be squirming is they went all in on the notion deficit reduction was going to solve all of the problems. this was going to bring about the recovery and so forth and so on. they fought it and fought it and fought it. now recovery is happening anyway. so now you have to ask this question very tough i imagine in an election year to sort of bring up this issue of we are putting debt on your grandchildren. and tried to bury john maynard and freddie krueger. >> we will have our graphics shop come up with that matchup. no, i think you make a krush april point and i thought the key moment was when john boehner went out to talk about the last jobs report and was doer about it we forced the debt ceiling deal. then they locked in these cuts

and those cuts removed the uncertainty and voila, job creation came. implausible story but it is something you can say where you don't -- >> i thought it was interesting when mitt romney said something to the effect of look, if you think the economy is getting better, go with the president. and -- >> that's a dangerous -- >> now, look, one point about structural. here is just a statistic that backs up something zephyr said. i don't think people are quite aware of this yet. corporate profits took a hit in the downturn as you expect. not only had they climbed back but -- they are not only past their prior peak, most recent quarter, third quarter of last year for which we have data, corporate profits is a share of natural income or highest they have ever been on record going back to 1947 when the data began, and compensation as a share of national income and is the lowest it has been since the mid 1960s. structural problems are in place. >> we will talk to an activist working with the syrian opposition about what's going on in that country next 37

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uprising started 11 months ago in syria confronting an escalating death toll as the president of assad attempts to crush the protesters. a british citizen of syrian dissent uploaded this video. >> you see over there, another rocket landed on one of the civilian's houses. this has been going on all day long from 5:00 a.m. this is about 8:00 a.m. right now. it is going to keep going on until 7:00 p.m. rockets, bullets, killing children on the street, body parts. why isn't anyone helping us? where's the humanity in the world? where tees u.n. have. >> three glnmen killed a military general outside of his home in did a mass kusz bringing the country to civil war. i-want to bring in an activist.

thank you for coming in. i read an interview with you. reason i want to -- interview with you publication at yea university. and it was the most clarifying thing i have read about what's going on in syria. very hard for us in the u.s. to track it partly because of the limited access to journalists inside. start real basic for me. what is the uprising about? how did it start? >> well, i mean, basically march 15 when we had the first major demonstration in the city of damascus. march 15 of 2011. there was earlier calls on facebook from the syrians living abroad to basically start syrian spring in line with the -- along the same lines of the egyptian revolution and tunisian revolution. at first none of the people actually heeded the calls, no one congregated. a small demonstration on march 15 in damascus and then this was

followed by a group of kids in the southern city, provincial town right next to the jordanian boarders that wrote down on the walls of their own school -- >> teenagers. teenagers people want to bring down the regime. sentence resonant in the egyptian revolution. >> spread through. >> basically the kids were arrested and tortured and as a result of that, as a result of the torture, 15 kids, beaten, nails got removed. it was horrific. and so as a result of that, in the southern -- particular southern city, the entire society mobilized. and that basically snowballed more violence on the part of the regime and firing at demonstrators and basically triggered other cities and other parts of the country to start demonstrating and organizing basically and, you know, this syrian revolution in motion.

>> it is a familiar dynamic in terms of demonstration being met with brutal repressive force, brutal repressive force then igniting more opposition. >> exactly. >> see brutality of what's going on. >> the first month most people, i mean, the -- most common slogans were basically we want reform and democracy ar. no one said we want to bring down this pick president and regime. as a result of the violence, as a result of the intense repression people basically lost hope this particular president, regime, will be able to lead this process. he gave an extremely disappointing speech at the parliament where basically he blamed everything going on americans and on the world and this is a foreign conspiracy. these people are infiltrators and radical its limb i-- islami.

and that basically pushed the street for further and further radicalization. >> you have spoken about him in that interview the different parts of the constituencies that constitute the uprise. >> right. >> and i want to you take us through that because it -- from outside it looks like just ash homogenous mass. >> most people now in the mainstream media in the west talk about the moment, eric spring moment. and in that interview i was trying to basically illuminate the fact in syria itself there were three different groups that were already active in terms of democratic struggle. the minute that there was some kind of a mass participation in the demonstrations, the -- three groups that were already active, you know, on a smaller scale, came to the forefront and presented the leadership and presented the language that -- liberal democratic pacifist language that basically dominated the demonstrations, facebook pages, the rhetoric of

the entire revolution for basically the first eight to ten months. >> those groups were? >> first, group of leftists, liberal leftists. >> i love those folks. >> cultural producers. actors. mostly based in damascus but also in other major cities and basically those people called for reform, called for democr y democratization. they were brutality crushed. lot of them were sent to prison. many of them had to flee. and so -- forms, my parents were part and parcel of this movement and this is how i basically got involved in this whole revolution because they were part of this earlier moment of dissent. the second group is -- basically a lot of the older families of the country, people who

associate themselves with the immediate post colonial period, when syria, for several years, had -- assemblance of a liberal democracy, multiparty system, lot of them pushed out of the country when the baath party took over. 1963. exact same year they had their coup in iraq. so a lot of these families were either still based in damascus, major cities, lot of them moved outside. europe, states or gulf. they were also very instrumental. one of the key figures of the revolution on the ground, a 40-year-old woman, descendant of this well known family from the '50s. she was extremely active on the grounds from day one. and then the third group which i did not know about because i come from a secular liberal background so i did not know there was this or islamic group that had completely embraced the language of nonviolence as

influenced by martin luther king and gandhi. they have this -- a particular understanding of islam or particular school of thought within islam. >> mystical. >> exactly. so -- based in southern syria. it was very important in the early stages of the revolution because they basically tried to marry a language of islam and with the language of establishing civil democratic state through pacifist means. >> i want to talk about nonviolence and violence and where syria is head order that spectrum and about what the world should be doing about what's happening in syria right after we take this break. [ tom ] we invented the turbine business right here in schenectady.

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the shelling is constant now. we are hearing the impact every few seconds. in reply, you can also hear a little bit of fire. it is a pretty futile gesture.

the shroud is for a 7-year-old girl. they carefully write her name. like all the dead here, she must be buried in darkness. daytime is too dangerous. there's no family, no prayers and little dignity. they have to hurry, even now they are attacked. will will be many more burials. >> amazing footage, chilling footage, out of syria from the bbc. you and i have been -- we have been discussing the roots to uprising. i want to you talk about how the uprising has evolved over time. my understand sing it started out in the vain of tunisia non-violent. this is something called the syrian free army and there is armed revolt happening. how did that change happen? and where is that going? >> so for several months people

were hoping for tahrir square moment in syria and work for grassroot movement. with time as a result of the intensification of repression, libyan model was unfolding. and -- skoe basically by the end of august, we have seen the biggest demonstrations yet. hundreds of thousands of people inself val cities, base you cannily triggered the regime to roll in tanks and in those cities. and as a result of that, people start to discussing what now and what can we do to tahrir square is not going to work because the army is not letting go of the regime and not talking their backs on the family. that basically within the libyan model in sight we had free syrian army, free syrian forces, launch on the 29th of july so -- they were not really at the forefront and picked up in october. and these are basically military deserters, refuse to firearms at demonstrators. now they are forming smaller groups and in the countryside outside the cities where there were -- they were being sent.

at first they were not doing really anything or they were trying to defend the demonstrations when they were being attacked by the army or security forces. but now there's more and more -- much more popular and now than they used to be six months ago. and this has to do obviously with the -- regime repression but also silence of the international community. people think there is no other option but to turn night an arms struggle. >> in terms of the community, two weeks ago, i believe, two weekends ago the u.n. resolution security council that would have -- endorsed a proposal put forward by the arab league actually and introduced by mock october owe that would have created a primary work from which assad to step down and moved to transition government. that past -- 13 votes. two of the veto boats on the security council, china and russia, vetoed it. that resolution did not happen. impasse in the u.n. and increasing violence by the regime and also arm struggle against a regime.

what now? >> well, there's -- there's utter despair on the ground. people are not going to let go. people do not want to go back to tear houses because they know that if they do, the regime will come after that one after the other. and it is going to be much worse than it is right now. we are going to go back to square one. and so as a result of the veto, there's been -- intense -- i mean, what's happening the past eight days, we lost more than 700 people. 59 kids. and entire families are being pulled out of the ruins of the buildings as a result of random shootings. underarm people want to carry arms and people want to support the free syrian army and hoping the world would -- would support the free syrian army. at the same time, i think that there has to be international pressure. i mean, by that i do not just mean sanctions that actually credible military threat on the regime. >> that's terrifying to me. congressman sarbanes is someone

that -- who would have to cast a vote if we ever put it before a vote which we stopped doing around military intervention. what are you thinking as we hear that? >> let me ask you. because -- obviously this is a humanitarian tragedy what's going on. we have a dictator turning on his own people. civilians and penning them in and slaughtering them basically. so you are getting increasing outrage internationally. and as people as that sort of crystallizes into a desire to intervene or help the question is going to be how do you do that and to whom do you direct that help? so what's the contact group? what's the friends group? you know, secretary clinton's talking in those terms and so forth. who do you see? i mean, we hear about the syrian national council. i guess, which is largely a group formed of exiles and so forth. who -- who do we direct the help and intervention to? >> right. >> we are hoping that -- we would have a decision out of the

united nations security council that as a result of the veto, i think there was the korean precedent there that they called for, international, korean president in 1951 or '52. where they called for an international coalition of the friends of syria. sarkozy and secretary clinton. so that would be an international body with certain international legitimacy. the arab league would be -- would play a key role along with the turks. i think any kind of intervention should be spearhead bid the arab league and ---ing the turks. in terms of playing this kind of mediating role between the nato and americans and europeans on the one hand and syrian people on the other. poem on the ground are supportive of that. and this is key for your viewers today. that people on the ground for -- long period of time, people wanted to do it on their own. now people want outside world to help them out. >> let me ask you just a -- sort of a journalistic question. mine, when you say people on the ground, the very hard to get information from syria how are

you able to say that 124 h? >> the first couple of months of the revolution as something called local organization of committees was formed. this is basically an umbrella of smaller committees formed in each town, neighborhood, city, where people were demonstrating. and those people would be in charge of organizing the demonstrations, uploading videos on facebook and twitter. communicating with the media, communicating with human rights activists. they would pick people like me, syrians living abroad, to be their liaison officers as it were between their own work and outside world. and so they are an organized body and have a website. they communicate, we communicate daily. >> regime is not shut -- has not shut down those channels. you are still able to communicate. >> interesting thing is the regime has not shut down the intern internet. they think they can use the internet to monitor them. on skype it is safe. everything is encoded. we are trying to communicate facebook, twitter, skype have

been all extremely instrumental for it to keep the conversation going between the inside and t out. >> i would very much like you to come back again because i think this story will play out. it is just -- exceptionally enlightening to hear from you about what's going on around there. thank you very much thank you. thank you for having me. >> what you should know for the news week ahead. ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 let's talk about how some companies like to get between ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 you and your money. ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 at charles schwab, we believe your money should be available ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 to you whenever and wherever you want. ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 which is why we rebate every atm fee worldwide. ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 and why our mobile app lets you transfer funds, ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 execute trades, even deposit checks just by ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 taking a picture, right from your phone. ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 so talk to chuck and put those barriers behind you. ttd#: 1-800-345-2550

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it is a time for preview "weekends with alex witt." >> this is heartbreaking. passing of whitney houston. what happened where she died remains a mystery this morning. we will bring you a live report from the scene. the latest what we learned. in politics, mitt romney take two. surprises another key vote.

does this blunt momentum of his maine rivals. president obama explained, we are going to talk with the author of a fascinating new article about analyzing the president's first three years and projects ahead through this next year. interesting stuff. back to you. >> thanks, alex. >> what should you know for the week coming up? you should know on friday, mitt romney tried so hard to convince the conservative political action conference and he was one of them and used the word conservative about 25 times, abun dan references to conservatives. and you should know that you really drive the point home. romney finally said this. >> i was a severely conservative republican governor. >> to which rush limbaugh replied i never heard anybody say i'm severely conservative. to what steve king wrote that didn't get a lot of applause. you should know rick santorum got a huge applause at cpac when he warned not to fall for liberal seducing them with sentimentality and attachment to dear planet earth.

>> one of the favorite things of the left is to use your sentimentality, your proper understanding and belief that we are stewards of this earth. and that we have responsibility to hand off is beautiful earth to the next generation. they use that and used it in the past to try to square you into supporting radical ideas on the environment. they tried it with this idea, this politicization of science called man-made global warming. i stood up and fought against those things. why? because they will destroy the very foundation of prosperity in our country. >> you should know despite his adorable sweater vest exterior he hangs with a tough crowd. he had dinner with bthe exec executive director of pro english. and you should know that before he was pro-english, he headed

the chicagoland friends of american renaissance. a group that opposed, quote, all the efforts to muks the races of mankind. you should know that $26 million of wisconsin share mortgage settlement will not be going towards helping homeowners that suffered foreclosure on abuse between 2008 and 2011 as part of governor skwot walker's severe austerity agenda, that money will be taken to help balance the state budget. you should know tom barrett, mayor of milwaukee, the city with the most foreclosures in the state, responded, quote, hundreds and possibly thousands lost their homes because of this bait and switch. worst thing that can happen now is for the state of wisconsin to employ its own bait and switch. you should know while jp morgan chase runs a campaign honoring dr. king as part of black history month the bank is in the process of trying to foreclosure on 78-year-old helen bailey. civil rights activist who marched in protest and attended dr. king's speech necessary tennessee. you should know that occupy nash

victim found a company willing to buy the house from chase for $85,000 and a petition change.org surging chase to accept the offer so that bailey doesn't end up homeless. you should know almost 50,000 people signed the petition and in the wake of negative publicity a chase spokesperson told business insider that postponed foreclosure sale on bailey's home four times and in hopes to reach an amicable solution. you should know while thousands are demonstrating in tokyo against nuclear power almost a year after the meltdown fukushima nuclear power plant the u.s. nuclear regulatory commission granted the first license for a new nuclear reactor since 1978. also, you should know that i wrote a book. it is called "twilight of the elites america." is about the crisis of authority in america, historically low levels of trust in pillar institutions and ways increasing inequality produce a 1% that's prone to failure and corruption. you should know this is what the cover looks like.

and you can order it at your online friendly retailer, amazon, barnes & noble. you should know that president obama made his supporters a mixed tape and uploaded it to spotify. you should know some of the songs obama's list are cool enough we think about using them on the show. florence and the machines, have you the love. we used to wait by arcade fire. you should also know there's one voice missing both from the play list that had huge impact on our culture. we will miss you, whitney. we will be right back. ♪ i wish you joy ♪ and happiness ♪ above all this i wish you love ♪ it's hard for my crew to keep up with 2% cash back on every purchase, every day. 2% cash back. that's setting the bar pretty high. thanks to spark, owning my own business

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the newsweek unfolds. congressman john sarbanes of the great state of maryland, what should we know? >> out of washington, all you're going to hear about is this extension of the payroll tax cut. we're running up against that deadline again. >> march 2nd. >> i'm pushing to have that he can tended for a full year. that's $40 a paycheck for the average person across the country. it looks like it's going to be, you know, a hotly contested issue gechblt we'll see how that resolves. the other thing, i think there will be more revelations this week of how these super pacs and big money outfits are influencing the presidential campaign and stay tuned for that. what should people know as we head into the week ahead? >> as people are paying attention to the -- what mitt romney might call the severely rich super pac. >> i like that coinage. >> the severely poor we should pay attention to.

who he is not as interested in. there are a wave of voter i.d. laws coming into effect this year. there's been recent litigation around that. the department of skrus tis has blocked south carolina's voter i.d. law because of the potential impact on african-americans. south carolina is suing. that will be interesting to see what happens there. >> the redistricting plan that was put forward by texas, of course, did not pass muster in the department oj. department of justice. texas is part of the voting rights act, one of the states subject to having its redistricting approved. that's going to be litigated in the court of appeals here in washington, d.c. we should also note that the obama administration's department of justice civil rights division has been an absolutely fantastic outfit, completely kicking butt left and right. and particularly after what happened to that part of the department of justice during the bush administration, which was really awful. career people basically forced to leave. people with a commitment to

enforcing civil rights walking away because there was no interest in doing so. one of the great stories of the obama administration is reviving and resus stating. jared bernstein. >> you don't hear enough approximate that. tomorrow the president is releasing his fiscal year 2013 budget. that's a big deal for people like me. it's not necessarily a big deal for republicans in congress who will pronounce it dead on arrival. because it's actually a pretty balanced plan. of what we know about it, the president seems to be trying to get this balanced between achieving a sustainable budget path down the road. the congressman is exactly right. this is not the time for deficit reduction with the economy growing out of recession. down the road, this is a budget that balances the debt to gdp ratio. it's a holy grail of some. $1.5 trillion in new revenues, particularly on upper income folks. so i think it's -- again, it's not going to be something that's

going to be approved by this congress, but it does really set up the vision, the contrast that we've seen throughout the -- >> i think it signifies a turn away from the deep austerity recession that gripped both the political class, certainly members of congress, the republican side and even the white house i think for a period there during last year. errol lewis, what should folks know? >> showdown over the highway bill going to heat up snimt yes. >> you've got the senate and the white house in a different direction. the house bill is trying to fundamentally change different things. something as fundamental as the highway trust fund, a reagan idea, taking a portion of the federal gas tax and use it to fund mass transportation. they want to kill it or subject it to year to year appropriations, which would be a very, very tough poll. it's an anti-urban bill among other things. it's a partisan bill and there's going to be a big showdown. some of that will happen. >> so glad you mentioned that. subway riding elites that newt

gingrich spoke up. they ride the subway to their multiunit apartment buildings, like all the folks in the bronx that i grew up. i want to thank my guests to. congressman john sarbanes, congressman from maryland. zephyr, associate teacher of law at fordham university. jared bernstein, and errol louis, political anchor at new york 1 news. thank you all. great discussion today. thank you at home for joining us. we'll be back. this is big. this is very big. next saturday at our new team, 8:00 a.m. eastern on saturday. 8:00 a.m. eastern. we had a graphic made to commemorate. 8:00 a.m., we'll be joined by jeff greenfield, former correspondent for cbs news and awe author of the book, then everything changed. in the meantime, you can find us on twitter on up with chris. up next is alex witt.

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