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tv   The Dylan Ratigan Show  MSNBC  April 6, 2012 1:00pm-2:00pm PDT

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neither should you. but your show, it starts right now. >> that's right, that's right. good afternoon, i am dylan ratigan, following the developments out of virginia beach. the navy fighters crashed into an apartment complex, also keeping an eye on that story, and we'll bring you an update as we learn more. but first on this good friday and the first night of passover for that matter and the first friday for the month of april. and that means it's jobs report friday. that's our big story today. the march jobs report came in as a meaningful disappointment. the experts projected could add 200,000 jobs last month. the number came in at 120,000, the unemployment rate stands at 8.2%, down .1% because people stopped looking for work. when the data gets better because people stop participating, that is not a
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good sign. for remember viewers for the d.r. show, we all know this number is not a real measure of our economy or for that matter of who's working between the mild weather, the participation rate, the way that we calculate it. this number really is just a made up pile of garbage that's no better than a 1950s nielsen rating. no one wants to change it, so we use the garbage. it gets us out of the jobs mess, you have to understand the scale of the problem, which is not some government statistic. it's how many americans don't have jobs. the answer to that is 30 million. and the reason i wrote my book, the reason i do this show every day is to advocate around the broad issues of reforming our banking, trade, and tax code so that we can move from a country that has money coming into it as opposed to trillions leaving it. but enough from me, we now bring in our jobs friday duo. peter, everyone thought the jobs
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number from march would be better. you know, what are your two cents? we'll do the number for a minute and go up to a different altitude. >> well, particularly disappointing was retail sales. those folks dropped a lot of employees indicating the consumer spending is slowing in march. that's bad news for growth going forward. the question is, do we rebound to 200,000? or is it down from here? there's some reason for pessimism and that's disconcerting. >> again, your two cents on this month's data point, jared. >> well, i think that everything you guys have said so far in terms of the disapointment relative to expectations and trend. look, one month does not a new trend make and as peter correctly pointed out, the question is, is this a one-off blip or the beginning of a slower trend? now from my perspective, 200,000 a month was already slow enough. i mean, that's -- that's better than where we've been. we need faster job growth if we're going to get this unemployment rate down as
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quickly as we need to. however, if you look at the quarterly data, which is actually a smart thing to do to kind of average out some of the bips and bops you get in the monday, we are probably underlying. >> can either of you identify a nation state in the modern day that has been prosperous while indulging a corrupt government that sells the tax code for money? a banking system that has no intention of lending to that nation state. i don't know what country it could be, or a country -- is there in history, peter, a nation state that has set up as an architecture, banking trade and tax code that ensures the removal of capital from that nation state as a base trend. is that an effective economic model for prosperity historically? >> well, absolutely not. i mean, you know, decapitalizing your country, running up huge deficits beyond which you'll be able to pay back, that's the
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road to disaster. right now we're living on borrowed money. we borrow lots and lots of money from the chinese to keep people employed at the present level. we're really on the road to greece. i don't want to lay this on the president. i want to lay it on both parties. neither one is offering the kinds of solutions we need. as we talked about in the past, we need 400,000, 500,000, 600,000 jobs a month. they seem to be satisfied at the white house with this. i think that's inappropriate. >> and jared, again, staying away from assigning blame to one political party or the other, where would you -- i don't know, i've been going on tv for three years pretty much saying the exact same thing which may just make me crazy. but at the end of the day, can you cite a nation state historically that has -- >> i've been reading a lot -- it so happens i'm reading books about economic history and it does turn out that mercantilism
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can be a profitable path for a while particularly as you give your industries a path to grow. i think you can make a case that china in its mercantilism has kind of a growth mechanism growing that is working for it in the short run. now i -- i probably agree -- >> at our expense. >> definitely at our expense. but also i would say at the expense of underinvesting in their own population. >> yeah. >> i'm not saying that's sustainable. look, in terms of getting back to today and the pace of job growth, i actually don't hear a lot of satisfaction coming out of the white house. i hear the white house continuing with a message that i think is the correct one, which is we're moving in the right direction, but we're doing it too slowly. and that's unquestionable -- >> but is it at this point the response to despair -- i'm going to let this finish. hang on. when it's over, i'll talk. is it the response to despair action? i feel like we've got this
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illusion that the response to despair is hope, which is a good way to accumulate political power. i thought the response, my personal response has been in my life when i experience despair, i want to help other people with despair, then i have to get to action. and i feel like this president has done a great job of manipulating the language of hope but an atrocious job acting when it pertains to banks, trade, and taxes. we can say i wish it was better. i know you're not the white house, but i could talk all day while i take money from the banks to perpetuate -- you get my point, jerry. >> i get the point. and it's a solid point. but let me say this. i've had the same thought this morning was that enough talk, auction. and my first thought was congress. i mean, we have -- >> i agree with that. >> we have such a dysfunctional congress right now. and i'm not going to assign blame to one party or another. but when it comes to fiscal stimulus, which is what i think we need right now, the republicans have totally shut
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that down. and i think that is at the heart of the problem. >> ultimately, i agree with jared, peter, that the congress is getting -- there's too much that it's easy to point to the president as the sitting king and say, well, the king is failing us, we must replace the king when in fact we do live in a democracy that has tremendous congressional authority and the congress makes a living at it saying, well, what are we going to do? what are we going to do? at some point, do we not have to raise the temperature on this congress not only to do something but to change the culture of how they function? >> right. >> well, i think it's the president's job to raise the temperature, but to do it in a different way. for the first two years he got just about everything he wanted. he got dodd/frank, the health care legislation and $1 trillion in stimulus. now things are not working out. we're not producing the kinds of job growth we need. he should be saying to congress. look, this didn't work, let's try something else, doing things
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differently. in the meantime, the congress is proposing the angela merkel solution, which is destroying spain and greece and portugal and all the others. my feeling is the president's in a tough position. he can't admit his policies aren't working, but they're not working satisfactorily. >> not only that, but by the president saying his policies aren't working satisfactorily, but it opens the door, jared, for the opposing party to come with the destruction plan. you'll be more willing to admit the short comings of my plan whereas in this case my p opponent politically if i were a democrat with the ryan plan has got the spain austerity annihilation plan. it creates a screwy political set-up. >> i wrote this morning on one of my blog posts, i actually think it's a good time to pick very much the fight that peter was talking about. i don't see why you wouldn't get up and say, look, i understand
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why congress is shutting down any good idea. but here are some good ideas. we have schools that could use infrastructure improvement. roads, bridges, state governments, there's a lot to do to marry the problem with the solution. and you know very much about the financial end of this. >> sure. >> i say, sure, pick those fights right now and those are good fights to have even if we know that the action won't be forthcoming given political gridlock. >> just to force the ideas of -- >> force the ideas. >> what should be considered into the water outside of washington. >> you know what i find frightening? >> sure. >> the notion that mitt romney's considering paul ryan as his running mate. i mean, that's like saying, gee, i want angela merkel to come over here and run the united states the way she's running greece, italy, spain, and the others. they remind me, frankly, of washington -- george washington's physicians. they bled him three times before he collapsed. >> no, no -- it is stunning to bear witness to my only -- the way i get myself into an optimistic state with all of
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this is in the hope that really the disengagement we're seeing will be able to find another path to move around things like corruption, to move around things like more competitive primaries in which i know those organizations exist, i just don't think we've got the full cohesion at this point yet. i guess i'll see you guys the next time there's a jobs report. it's always a pleasure. >> if not sooner. >> take care of yourself. thanks, guys. coming up on the show. the latest on the breaking news out of virginia beach. an f-18 crashing into an apartment complex, injury check there. along with a visit on the scene. plus, the sports story everyone's talking about this afternoon, the troubling audio recording of the nfl bounty system in action. we'll play it and get the megapanel's take and the annual white house easter egg roll gets pranked. but the full's still on. what funny family will not be at the white house.
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and who has egg on their face today. it's all ahead. we hope you'll spend a little timeanotr holiday weekend. [ groans ] [ marge ] psst. constipated? phillips' caplets use magnesium, an ingredient that works more naturally with your colon than stimulant laxatives, for effective relief of constipation without cramps. thanks. good morning, students. today we're gonna continue...
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bursting into flames. only seven reported injured. earlier reports say the jet crashed shortly after takeoff. both pilots reportedly dumped fuel on the way down to avoid what would have been a far more dangerous explosion. the navy has released the following statement from u.s. fleet commander admiral john c. harvey. he says i deeply regret that some in ourmes d it also offer gratitude to the citizens of virginia beach, he says, as well as virginia beach's first responders for their immediate and heroic response to take care of our air crew. we will bring you any significant developments in this story here as we get them. but we turn our attention now to the other story everyone's talking about this friday afternoon. former saints defensive coordinator greg williams urging his team to kill the head. kill the head. can you kill the head and not kill the body?
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i don't know. literally the director was kill the head and apparently had nothing against the body. specifically killing the head of 49ers' running back al gore -- frank gore, sorry. >> make sure we kill frank gore's head. we want him running sideways. we want his head sideways. >> williams now suspended indefinitely from the nfl after putting out bounties on opposing players. the recording the latest window into the kind of attitude and culture that gregg williams demanded. but is this all about a rogue team and a rogue coach with a rogue culture? or is this the kind of violence exactly the culture that the nfl has been selling for years? obviously it's impossible to answer that question. but we have brought in the finest minds in sports. crystal ball at the lead on the
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sports desk this afternoon with ari melver. and if they get in trouble we'll go to torre. >> neither of those things are true. well, no -- >> what do you think is true? >> well, it's been interesting we've seen a variety of responses from other nfl players. others have said i have never heard of this sort of thing. i've never had a bounty, i've never experienced that in any of the locker rooms i've been in. others have said this kind of language is common. we've seen bounties before they realized the nfl was going to be investigating everyone, they said, yeah, sure, everyone's doing bounties. i imagine this system is far more pervasive than just the saints. >> yeah. >> i don't think it's in every locker room. and the nfl's been consistent every season twice a year they remind you. no non-contract payouts. now, this is a very dangerous part of the game. we expect big hits. we don't expect out of play hits. he's telling them, hey, hit the
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head in the pile. >> i get it. >> the play is over. >> hit the head -- look for the head like you would a watermelon and squash it. >> look, the nfl considers itself a fraternity and when you're talking about do things that will damage guys' ability to make a living and support their families. >> yeah. >> that's very dangerous. that's not very fraternity. >> what defines a fraternity or any group is its culture. and the culture that dictates how we behave relative to each other. are we going to behave with each other with respect? with affection? with loathing? we're part of a group. whatever it is, the culture dictates how we behave. >> right. >> the more intense the culture is, the more intense a group is, the more influential a culture is. soldiers have a really strong cultural reliance on each other
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as to how they're going to rely. you've got somebody's chest open, there's a culture. the football team is in that threshold the cultural definition and it really, crystal, sets the culture for the country in a sense. it reflects what is our culture. and i just wonder when you look at the way we solve problems -- i could hear a republican or democratic strategist telling a politician to metaphorically kill the head of -- they're like i don't care about the policy debate, i care about killing the head of my political opponent so that we have power. it's not about winning, competing, or aspiring or reaching up to anything, it is simply about terminating your opponent. >> in football game, it's easy to look at it and say, this is just a game. so obviously these means do not justify the ends. when you're talking about something like politics -- >> where there's money and power. >> there's money, but also people who are telling themselves that what they're doing once they get into power, once they are able to aspire to
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whatever it is that they're trying to do, they're telling themselves that that position is going to make all of the bad things they did worthwhile. and so you have a much tougher -- >> more incentive -- >> absolutely. absolutely. >> ari, your thoughts on the gregg williams tape as a canary in the coal mine to the decay of american culture. >> well, it is really messed up. and what you see in sports typically is people make an agreement to go into a situation and allow things that otherwise might not be allowed. so in boxing or hockey, you actually consent to conduct that otherwise would be criminal, right? because you say, well, we're boxing and there are rules and thus what wouldn't be allowed on the street is allowed in the ring. that entire system if you think about it fundamentally, that entire system turns on everyone agreeing to a set of rules that affects their safety and their livelihoods that goes above and beyond what would be allowed
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elsewhere. this is a fundamental break with that contract. you can consider it an actual contract because they've signed with the league and as toure mentioned, there are rules about this. it's a social contract with these people and very dangerous thing. so ultimately, when that breaks down completely, you have to go back to the laws they got around and say, okay, if you're targeting people, you're in a conspiracy to commit assault or battery, that needs to be dealt with and investigated. >> gregg williams is in a special vice now. he's going to have to tell above and beyond what he's already told in order to get back into the league. and they've already disciplined the people above him as much as humanly possible. >> sean peyton -- >> the general manager, mickey lumis. so gregg williams is going to have to snitch down on the players who were a part of this in order to get back into the league. >> more vicious to the culture. >> you know he has snitched on the players. if he doesn't, you know he said i'm not going to tell anymore.
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he's in a dangerous position. >> and ultimately, ari, and to krystal's point, we have this culture in how we exchange power and money in our country, it's not just in the nfl. and when you are making decisions where human life is at stake with this mentality, you end up with a screw ball country. i don't want to pivot from the bounty gate conversation to a different group of folks getting paid to bend the rules. this the national journal's work out with the top paid executives in washington getting paid on the back end through the revolving door. speaking of a wonderful culture, and lots of former lawmakers stunningly -- >> no. >> i could not believe it, krystal. open the list and behold people who had -- >> not billy -- >> yes, people who had previously held positions of
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political influence were suddenly being bought off by special interests with millions of dollars to do their bidding after they left the job to the tune of 1,452% salary increase, which i'm sure, krystal is what you're expecting when you retire from msnbc. >> this is why i ran for congress back in 2010. >> yeah. >> you know, it's sad that we're joking about it because nobody's shocked by this. we just so accept this is the system. >> that's why 90% of americans don't vote in a primary. >> right. >> they are like this is a corrupt, bought system, ari. >> what does my vote matter? >> and it is -- this is a corrupt -- we -- until there's a real piece of anti-corruption legislation that closes the revolving door, that makes the super pac money transparent, how can you win the confidence of an average american voter?
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is that too cynical on my part? >> no, i think that's the way a lot of people feel. you talked about it in your book, we've talked about it on the show, there have been rules proposed, they have been shut down by members of congress despite being overwhelmingly popular because they're looking at their interests not the voters' interests. and people who say this is how it's always been, that's no the the case. 100 years ago the rates of profiteering and lobbying were far lower. this is a problem that has gotten a lot worse and the only silver lining in that. if we used to do it better, i do think we could do it better again. because we didn't have as greedy, i don't think, as greedy a public core of public servants in the old days. >> last word -- >> i grew up in a generation, generation next that never had a moment of political innocence. we grow up hearing about watergate, we see iran contra, we grow up older -- >> are you suggesting we're not the same age?
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>> no, i'm older than you, dylan. but the point remains that the generation "x" in particular has never had a chance for political innocence. this is just one of those things that continues to scrape away and justify the cynicism that we have always had. >> and, again, it goes back to what i was saying earlier, the response to despair is action. and the problem right now is where you're getting despair in the response of disengagement or hope. neither of which actually repair the problem, which is why it's actually been nice to travel around. you meet people that are taking action in the face of despair as opposed to simply disengaging or sort of talking without walking. straight ahead, for the nonlawmakers turn wealthy lobbyists, economics changing the family unit. you've heard of boomerang kids, our specialist with a whole profile of what she calls the
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leaving the nest, the term most parents are happy to say about their kids heading off to college. what happens when those children come flocking back four years later? according to pew research, 4 out of 10 adults live back at home with mom and dad. and a specialist says the economy is to blame not just for those boomerang kids but the entire accordion family. author of the aptly named "the accordion family: boomerang kids and the private toll of competition." what's the connection between the global competition and the accordion family? >> so labor markets have really taken a tumble and young people have been the most hit. so the entry-level worker is in bad shape. housing prices are rising, and that combination forced most yuj people either back into the family home or they didn't get to leave in the first place. >> toure?
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krystal? >> the ability -- how do you find any sort of self-esteem when you're a 26, 27, 28-year-old man, especially, living at home with your parents? >> it gets tough when you get to be that age. but i think what's changed is the distance between 18 and 27, now it's pretty common for kids who are 18 to 22 if they're from working class households and 22 to 25 if they're in middle class to be at home. and if it's common, it's not a super stigma. but if you're much older -- >> culture, baby, culture. >> if you're older, it's difficult territory. if you can't find a job, everybody's in trouble and pain. >> a large part of this is the jobs market and how it is to make it on your own with the cost of living, child care, all of those things. have you also seen a trend of people just by choice wanting to move back in? because one of the things i've witnessed in traveling around the world is there is in some cultures more of a cultural emphasis on keeping the extended
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family together and socialization. there are some benefits that come from that. i'm interested to know if you saw people who are actually choosing that even though they didn't have to. >> there are cultures in which this is the tradition. but what's changed is how long it takes before they marry. they've always stayed home until they marry, but now they're not marrying until they're 30, 35, or not at all. yes, there are cultures where it's completely normal to do this. and i would say right now in our culture, it's completely normal to do this too up to a certain age. beyond that, it's not so much anymore. so what we have here in the u.s. is two generations side by side, one for whom this is a common experience. 85% of today's college students will come home at some point or other. >> that's incredible. >> if you're the norm, you aren't highly stigmatized. if you're next door to your parents' generation who left at 18 and would never come back. >> or toure and myself would be giving you a hard time. >> get out of the house. and then -- and then ari would step and be like, oh, are you living on your dad's couch? go ahead, we have a question here. >> yeah, i mean, i'm back home --
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>> sorry. >> i'm back home in seattle visiting my parents for passover this weekend -- >> that's allowed, a ri. >> you can stay there. >> don't tempt me, i like it here. look behind me, how could you not? but i'm here for a couple of days having a great time. and i remember having a great time when i grew up here. i think if i stayed more than 4 or 5 days it would be a little much for both parties, especially having been away for a decade now. that makes me wonder anecdotally, is there a difference in people who just stay leaving may not have been a real option versus kids who leave, perhaps thinking they're going to start the next phase of their life and are set back? does that make any kind of difference in the work that you see? >> i think the biggest difference is what's the reason why they're there? if your kid comes home because they need to get a masters degree or experience in the work
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world for which they're being paid nothing as an intern, then the family is collaborating to boost the next generation up a level. and that's not a bad thing for families to do. it's what families are for. if on the other hand, the reason they're at home is they've tried and failed and nothing's working and they're not going anywhere and they don't have a plan, now you're talking about a different scenario. americans are very keyed toward mobility, intention, effort. if you're doing all those things and it's not going anywhere, there might be sympathy there rather than anger. so a lot depends on the reasons and the temperature inside the household and what those relations were like before the kid left. if they were bad before, they don't get better when they come back. if they were good before, it can create a bond between the generations that lasts way into the elder, elder years of the elder generation. there are lots of reasons this is good for the older people in the household. it keeps them young. they're not empty nested, not becoming grandparents, it's a fountain of sociological youth for them.
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>> did you get a chance to review the study from japan? where men are retreating into their rooms and not coming out for years and years. >> japan is the one country i studied where this is a complete pathology. the whole country is hysterical about this. it's defined as a defective generation that was raised by parents who somehow dropped the ball and they buried this moral stigma for having done so. what's interesting to me is, as you know, japan experienced an economic downturn 20 years ago that it has not come out of yet. i never heard a single japanese parent talk about the economy as the reason why their kids were at home. it was all about the intentional failures of the next generation. in spain, where exactly the same thing's going on, the first thing they point to is the economy, the government, big business, 1,000 other things outside of the private control of any individual. so every country has its own explanation for why this has happened. and it puts the blame and the responsibility in different places. >> so does this then ultimately
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validate the authors that come across this set that basically say the human brain's capacity to actually identify what's happening is nonexistent? >> that's the -- >> basically whatever the exact same problem but one culture defines a problem as a failure of the parents, the other culture defines the problem as a failure of the government, the other -- and it really just validates we're all nuts. >> no, that culture matters. right? culture matters. people see things through a lens of their culture. no facts are interpreted. we can get into a seminar about that. >> i like that. we've got the dean of john hopkins here. this is fantastic. >> yeah. >> facts are interpreted through the culture. >> and there's no narrative that matters to support it, it must exist within a narrative. >> that's true. >> you should have put that in your essay when you applied to john hopkins. >> wow. >> oh. >> we would have been happy too. >> thank you very much.
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>> and thanks to the panel. ari, enjoy your time in the great northwest. you look smashing with the half of space needle that probably is fake over your right shoulder. >> it's real. >> it's real, okay, wonderful. chris, have a wonderful weekend and wonderful holiday. whether you live with them or just visiting, like ari, families across the country are coming together to celebrate passover and easter. and next up, a sneak peep of what the white house has planned on this holiday of renewal as you can see, bo, the white house dog is ready to go. [ male announcer ] if you believe the mayan calendar,
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so who's in control now, mayans?
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in addition to the religious significance, i believe this is the most significant of any religious holidays. speaking to the forces of renewal and regeneration. it is also an excuse to eat a whole bunch of candy. in fact, easter's the
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second-best candy selling holiday. 76% of americans admitting to chomping the ears off first. and while we love our chocolate, it's the peeps, those marshmallow sugar candy. the top-selling easter candy and speaking of easter traditions, what would the egg roll. the first official festivities in 1878. president was rutherford hayes, 35,000 people are expected at the event this monday on the south lawn. joining in the egg dyeing music and games are a host of celebrities and chef, including our buddy marcus samuelson. also some characters to entertain the kids, but not in attendance the cartoon cast of family guy. some practical jokesters claim the dysfunctional animated family will be making a white house appearance for the egg roll. turns out the whole thing was
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just an april fool's joke that some media outlets didn't get ultimately. ing in says happy easter like an alcoholic dog and a baby bent on taking over the world. straight ahead, primary responsibility, the one thing that almost none of us do that don't require any legal changes that we could all do this year in 2012 without any government authorization to improve our own democracy. what could that possibly be? we'll discuss after this. our fastest way to return your car. just note your mileage and zap ! you're outta there ! we'll e-mail your receipt in a flash, too. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz. lastin florida we hadulf's best tomore sun tans...years. in alabama we had more beautiful blooms... in mississippi we had more good times... in louisiana we had more fun on the water. last season we broke all kinds of records
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we've got it all. the petition, we talk about the ar gerrymandering in texas. but all of those things require legislation. you've got to pass a law, fill in the movement, we can't do it -- there's one, however, that we can all do right now, this year, 2012, no law changes, no nothing. to massively enhance our connection with those who represent us. it's a group of folks that represent people who advocate participating in primary elections. isn't that weird? nobody does that. i haven't been to a primary in years. it's crazy. but apparently if we participate
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in the primaries, it will be a massive benefit to us. in fact, only 8% to 12% of those who are voting age right now, which means 9 out of 10 of us are like me, we never ever, ever vote in a primary. and our next guests are taking on this as what they see as the number one immediately fixable dysfunction in america's democracy. mark mek ler now working with leah lynnbeck. their goal as they say it to reconnect voters with the people that they vote for. so you're saying i've got to vote in the primaries? >> yeah, i'm sorry, dylan, if you want your voice to be heard, you've got to vote in the primaries. >> why? >> that's where the decision is made. >> what do you mean? >> 85% of congressional districts in the u.s. house are either republican or democratic districts. >> meaning from the gerrymandering or the natural occurrence -- >> it's just the way it is. you could try to change that, but not going to change it in
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2012. so in those 85% of the districts, the decision is not made in november. the decision is made in the primary election. and so if you want your voice to be heard. if you want to be -- >> but the candidates stink. you know, it's one of those things, mark, you're going to make me go to the primaries, a bunch of yee-haws. >> if 85% of the districts are fixed, that means only 15% of us have a vote that matters in the general election. the game is decided in the primaries and in the primaries, nobody's playing right now. what's going on in the country in 2010, a major change here, 300 -- >> it was the biggest wave election. this was it, baby. >> so 396 stood in the primaries for reelection, right? out of -- >> incumbents. >> stood for reelection, out of that only four lost their primaries. only four. >> and it's worse than that. in the previous four cycles, a total number of 12 lost, so three per year.
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over that same time period, 13 died in office. >> basically what you're saying is incumbents also keep their jobs? >> the system is stacked that way. >> the exception is when they do not. >> correct. >> and the reason that -- and once they keep their jobs then their ability to oblige to special interests and ignore the voter explodes because my job's no longer at risk. so now whether it's money or anything, it could be any manipulative influence, i'm more able to react to that if they're not going to get rid of me anyway. can't do anything about it. explain to me, again, why my voting and anybody else voting in a primary in some way diminishes that. >> well, the more people that vote. your vote has like a five times value compared to the general election because so few people are voting. if you get a small group of people. you can literally with 10,000 votes influence a primary election and get a candidate that represents you. that's what it's about. it's not republican, democrat, liberal, or conservative. this is about getting people who actually represent the people in their district. that's what we care about.
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>> and right now, the most partisan people are showing up and voting in the primaries, right? if you think of the american political world as sort of being this distribution, it's the tails of the distribution that are showing up to vote in the primaries. in the general, if you have a choice, they're polarized choices. show up, and if everyone voted in the primary, then the outcomes would look much less polarized. >> and you could understand why there are people like me and i represent 90% of america which view the primary as a -- as something that is either not for me, for whatever the reason is. i'm not one of those parties. how do you get people like me out of our chairs and to the primary voting booth? >> because, look, you should be outraged. this is exactly how the politicians want you to feel. they don't like the primaries. what incumbent wants to come before his constituents and defend his record. they mostly have abysmal
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records. they don't want a challenger who actually comes up, puts adds on. that's what campaign for primary accountability does. get out there, level the playing field, put ads out that say this is what the incumbent's record is. if people want to reelect them and they know the record, then more power to them. that person should be representing that district. >> why when you look at any system of making decisions, whether it's a corporate board or political environment, whether it's a community environment, whatever the governance might be, why does the quality of the decisions that any group makes get worse in a culture like the one we have? why is this so central to repairing the culture? >> well, look -- the supreme act of political power is the definition of the alternatives. that's what decided -- if the american people in any large group of people given two good alternatives will make a good decision, right? what's happening is that the parties have set up a system and the incumbents are actively
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participating in to limit their options. limit their choices. 62% of house members, house incumbents in 2010 ran unopposed in the primaries. >> so 2 out of 3 have no test at a preliminary level. >> right. >> so they're guaranteed the job after that because i don't want a vote in the primaries. it's my fault. >> and remember, leadership in congress is about long-term incumbency. the longer you've been there the longer -- >> so these are the worst people that their ideas are never tested, they never have to run against an opponent, and these are the ones that end up being the leaders. >> what are you guys doing? >> we're taking on entrenched incumbents in safe districts, not looking to transfer power to an irresponsible republican party and democratic party. safe districts, long-term incumbents with incredible challengers that are unpopular in their district. so we polled in the district and we designed through our super pac. i know it's a nasty word. but we have -- it's a citizen
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super pac. >> yes. >> it's a vehicle. we go in and we basically level the playing field. and we run advertising and radio and tv. >> yep. >> and people want to learn more about it, where do i send them? >> primary -- >> campaigns with an "s?" >> campaign. >> numeral four. listen -- how do i find out how to vote in a primary? >> ballot pedia.org and put your state in you'll find it. >> wow, i didn't know about that. >> great resource. >> the internet, huh? it's crazy, i wonder who invented that. congratulations. you have my whole hearted support and i will vote in the primary. >> thanks, dylan. >> even though -- we'll do it anyway because you have to for america. coming up, you heard the jobs numbers at the top of the show,
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"hardball" will hone in the politics of the area. but first toure is back with a daily rant. is this what we're doing now? i don't want a plunger anywhere near my coffee. not in my house. with maxwell house french roast, you let gravity do the work. [ male announcer ] maxwell house french roast. always good to the last drop. but what's even more surprising is that brushing alone isn't enough to keep it clean. fortunately, you've got listerine. unlike brushing which misses 75% of your mouth, listerine cleans virtually your entire mouth. so what are you waiting for? it's time to take your mouth to a whole new level of health. listerine... power to your mouth. also try listerine zero,
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here's toure with the daily rant. >> i was proud to see this show feature professor michelle al san zander yesterday, the author of the "new jim crow" which argues and proves that the war on drugs was truly meant to reinstate the legalized discrimination that marked this country during slavery and jim crow, hence the overpolicing of black crime which leads to convicts who permanently lose the civil rights movement
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revealing this to be a new system of jim crow. >> so many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the jim crow era are suddenly legal again once you've been branded a felon. >> alexandalexander's book is a read. if you think blacks go to jail more often because we commit more crime, come on, man, that's not true. white youths are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color and people of all races use and sell drugs at remarkably similar rates. if you think people who commit crime don't deserve rights after they've done their crime, then how can someone return to being a productive part of society if they're legally discriminated against in employment, housing, voting, and other areas? should being convicted of any crime lock you into a life of crime or s? at a time when drug use in america was declining.
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the crack epidemic didn't start until 1984, the war on drugs was not a response to the crack epidemic as alexander proves, the opposite is true. in the '80s, the cia was bankrolling nicaraguan contras and blocking law enforcement investigations into their efforts to bring cocaine into this country that would become crack. the war on drugs was not about stopping crack, it was part of a reoccurring historic pattern where a surge forward in black rights and power is met by a reassertion of white power by changing the laws to perpetuate white power in a new environment. so slavery becomes reconstruction becomes jim crow becomes the civil rights movement becomes the era of mass incarceration when despite of equal race and drug crime, black people are policed at higher rates because of racialized social control is extremely valuable to maintaining the
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status quo. and at the bottom of all of that, alexander points out is an imperative flowing from the elite class that blacks remain america's stigmatized class so that poor whites and blacks will never see their interests as aligned and thus merge as a potentially unstoppable super group demanding reform in economics and the legal system and the distribution of power. and one america rather than what we have which is two americas, separate and unequal. read this book, it will change how you see this country. you won't like what you read. but it is a must to understand where we are now. >> when i look at the contents of this book or look at the statistics that are borne out in this particular vein of conversation, it really is one of the most shameful things i feel as an american. >> yeah. >> and i wonder if as this becomes more broadly understood, i believe shame is a very powerful motivator, actually.

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