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tv   The Ed Show  MSNBC  June 13, 2012 8:00pm-9:00pm PDT

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fine, we'll make you the nominee. sure, go ahead. >> jonathan capehart, who knows a doughnut when he sees one, thank you very much for joining me tonight, jonathan. >> thanks, lawrence. >> you can have the last word online at our blog, thelastword.msnbc.com, and you can follow my tweets online @lawrence, even the tweets i was doing during the show tonight. "the ed show" is-up next. good evening, americans. welcome to "the ed show," i'm michael eric dyson in for ed schultz. senate republicans roll odd out the red carpet for jpmorgan's ceo jamie dimon today. tonight bernie sanders and i will not be as kind. this is "the ed show," and ed would say, let's get to work. >> too big to fail banks are frankly too big to manage and too big to regulate. >> jpmorgan chase ceo jamie dimon takes heat from democrats and gets love from republicans. >> the loss is unfortunate. you've apologized for that. >> with we can hardly sit in
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judgment of your losing $2 billion. >> you're largely renowned, widely so, i think, as being one of the best ceos in the country for financial institutions. >> bloomberg's william cohan on today's missed opportunity with jamie dimon. and why the american people are still exposed to the big bank skee casinos. the romney campaign goes silent on teachers, firefighter, and police. we will show you exactly why mitt romney stopped talking. and could prejudice cause president obama the election in november? >> this is little hussein. >> a controversial new study on racism in america says it could happen. >> we've got to move forward to the future we imagine where everybody's getting a fair shot! who needs reality television when you have the hallowed halls of the united states congress. what happened on capitol hill today should have been a step towards preventing another financial crisis that threatens the global economy. what we got instead was a two-hour display of political theater that could have won a
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tony award if it wasn't so predictable. jpmorgan chase ceo jamie dimon went before congress today to explain how his company suffered $2 billion in counting in losses by engaging in the same high-stakes trading that led to the financial collapse of 2008. the drama started right away, as dimon was confronted in the chambers by protesters decrying jpmorgan's foreclosure process. >> why don't you face the people you foreclosed on? >> stop foreclosures now! stop foreclosures now! stop foreclosures now! >> you can't give me a modification, dimon? your day's coming! >> stop foreclosures now! stop foreclosures now! stop foreclosures now! stop foreclosures now! stop foreclosures now! >> dimon was able to weather that storm, and he wasn't too affected by some mild prodding at the hands of senate democrats. >> we had a direct loss of maybe $1 billion or $2 billion when
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aig went down, and we would have been okay. >> then you have a difference of opinion with many analysts of the situation who felt the aig bailout did benefit you enormously. i'm not going over that argument with you now -- >> they're factually wrong -- >> sir, this is not your hearing and i'm asking you to respond questions and i only have five minutes. >> maybe dimon never lost his cool because he knew as all-out lovefest was ready to come his way, in the form of swooning republican senators. >> you're obviously renowned, rightly so, i think, as being one of the best ceos in the country for financial institutions. you missed this. it's a blip on the radar screen. >> we can hardly sit in judgment of your losing $2 billion. we lose twice that every day here in washington and plan to continue to do that every day. >> the loss is unfortunate. you've apologized for that. you've kind of walked us all through that. >> i mean, what is this? hey, brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. is this a senate hearing or an episode of "the bachelor."
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it wasn't a big leap from the republicans turning their faung over jamie dimon into a symposium on less financial regulation. >> one of the tensions that we face here is, we want to be sure that we are adequately regulating our financial institutions, but we want to be sure, also, that we basically don't have the regulators running our private sector institutions. >> and who do the republicans want to help them establish a future of limited financial regulation? you got it, jamie dimon, of course. >> we're here quizzing you. if you were sitting on this side of the dais, what would you do make our system safer than it is and still meet the needs of a global economy like we have? >> i guess if i could just leave you with any one thing, if you could come back this time next year and talk about how the industry has put together a large-scale best practice committees, that would help us keep banking as a private
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enterprise rather than as a banking, rather than as a government institution. >> did i hear you correctly there? >> yes. >> did you volunteer to be part of that conversation? >> yes, i -- me and lots of other folks will do whatever you want. we'll even get apartments down there, let's go through in detail. we spoke to lots of people. >> wow, so the wolf that eats up the chickens is the one who protects the eggs. so here we are, nearly four years after the worst economic crash since the great depression, and nothing has changed when it comes to accountability. it was almost four years ago when the ceo of lehman brothers, richard fold, sat before congress to push the blame around. lehman brothers was one of the major culprits of the supreme lending crisis, the subprime lending crisis. today we had perhaps the nation's most powerful banking ceo take a browbeating from some democrats and heaps of praise from republicans. but there's no indication jpmorgan or any other bank will end the derivatives trading and other risky gamble that could
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send us into another economic tailspin. wall street emerged from the financial crisis better than ever before. the same can't be said for people who lost their homes, their life savings and worse. get your krmcell phones out. i want to know what you think. do you think risky behavior by wall street will drive us into another financial crisis? text "a" for yes, "b" for no to 622639. joining me now is senator bernie sanders of vermont. let's get right down to brass tax and knuckles. do you think anything good came from today's hearing. was all of this fawning celebratory rhetoric that emerged from the republicans on that committee? >> well, michael, i'm not on the committee and i wasn't in the room, but from what i could hear and what i read, it really was quite incredible. you have wall street, which
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through their greed, their recklessness, and their illegal behavior, caused this horrendous recession, leading to mass unemployment, people losing their homes, losing their life savings. we just had a recent report from the feds, median family wealthy between 2007 and 2010 went down 40%. this is the results of wall street. wall street over the years spent $5 billion in order to get deregulated so they could do what they're doing today and the result was the crash of our economy. and to exalt and to praise and to honor the head of the largest financial institution when it comes to capitol hill is beyond my comprehension. >> yeah, well, it's beyond the comprehension of many people, who thought that somehow financial regulation had at least been at the center of the kind of rhetoric of the senate to be able to at least protect the american people. do you think, in light of this, that we could actually end up having even less financial
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regulation than we do now? >> well, look, i think the real story is, and everybody should understand this, is this is not a question of congress regulating wall street, this is much more a question of wall street and all of their money regulating congress, through their lobbying, through their campaign contributions, and with citizens united, that situation is even more dangerous. look, michael, here's where we are right now. these are some of the issues that have to be addressed. you've got six financial institutions today. jpmorgan chase being the largest, that have assets equivalent to two-thirds of our gdp. they write half the mortgages, two-thirds of the credit cards. if teddy roosevelt were alive today, what do you think he would say? he would say, and i agree with him, let's break them up. we have banks that are charging working people 25%, 30% interest rates on their credit cards. we should be addressing that issue. you have incredible conflicts of interest at the fed. jamie dimon, the head of the largest financial institution in this country, sits on the new
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york fed and during the financial crisis, his bank received over $300 billion in low-interest loans. you think there's a conflict of interest there? you think we should deal with that? so the issue now is, does congress have the guts to stand up to the most powerful entity in the world, which is wall street and their money? >> well, it's a question that is not inconsequential. let's take a listen here. mitt romney spoke at a business roundtable in washington today. >> i will halt all the obama-era regulations and carry out a review of those regulations and get rid of those that are not meaningful or that cost jobs in this country. we've got too much regulatory burden. >> i don't know, bernie sanders. senator, that scares me. how dangerous is this position? >> it is once again almost beyond belief. we are where we are today because wall street fought for deregulation, fought for the end of glass-steagall, fought to allow commercial banks to merge with investment banks, to emerge
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with insurance companies. fought to allow them to be able to sell worthless products without the kind of proper regulation, to know what's going on. the end result is, they drive us into a recession, and then mr. romney says, the solution is to deregulate them even more. let them do even more of the stuff that they do. the bottom line here is what we need is a wall street and financial institutions that cease being the largest gambling casino in the world, and start investing in the productive economy in america and start helping us to create the jobs we desperately need. >> all right, senator, thank you so very much, as usual. senator bernie sanders. now let's turn to william cohen, former managing director at jpmorgan chase, now a bloomberg news columnist and author of "money and power: how goldman sachs came to rule the world." thanks for joining us, my friend. >> thank you, michael. >> as someone who used to work
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at jpmorgan, what'd you take away from today's testimony? how did it register to you? >> you know, it really registered -- the thing that lingers in my mind, michael, is how did jamie dimon let this happen? jamie dimon is known as a micromanager. he was a micromanager when he worked for the sandy wild at citigroup, he was a micromanager at bank one, he was a micromanager when he came into jpmorgan chase. he even stopped the use of black sedans at night when bankers work late. he is a serious micromanager, and yet he left this chief investment office with $350 billion of the bank's cash reserves be invested without so much as going to an investment committee meeting in that division to regulate to figure out what was going on. it's like he said, i'm going to let this ina drew, who was the chief investment officer, who has since resigned, i'm going to let her do this. i have a lot of faith in her. i'm paying her $15 million a
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year and i'm going to let her do this. and unfortunately, it's completely out of character for this guy to let her do what she wanted to do without his supervision. and i don't understand it. and he didn't answer it today. >> right. and i was going to say, so we have no shred of evidence to suggest any hint that he might have done this because, look, i'm overburdened on this end, i'm going to take care of other things that demand my attention. this is something that she needs to pay attention to, but as a micromanager, certainly this is a central operation of the company there. and it seems to me that if you don't take care of this particular part of your bailiwick, everything else goes out of kilter. >> well, obviously, this is a division that was making a ton of money, as much as $5 billion over the years. this is the first time they'd suffered a loss. clearly, though, this is something -- thing what he didn't say to the senators and they didn't ask, and maybe the house of representatives on june 19th will ask this question, what he didn't answer was, why he let her do this. and clearly, this was done at
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his direction. he really wanted this money to be invested in higher-yielding assets, and it was paying off for a long time without anybody really knowing it. when they lost money, that's when we find out about it. and now, of course, you know, we're all sort of suffering from this. >> sure. well, he went on cnbc, that is, mr. dimon, after his testimony, he talked about whether he will lose any compensation because of the losses. >> my comp is completely set by the board of directors, you know, 100% set. i assume that they'll incorporate this in how they evaluate me, but i'm going to leave that to them. i think it's inappropriate for me to tell you what the board is going to do. >> it's not merit based, it's not based upon our performance, is it? this is what the rest of regular americans have to deal with. so based on that statement, do you image dimon will be going home with any less in his pocket at the end of the year? >> again, i think it's going to come down to the kind of performance that jpmorgan has for the rest of the year. what they're saying inside jpmorgan for the second quarter, they're actually going to perform very well, despite this
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$2 billion or $3 billion loss. if jamie dimon puts up the kind of numbers he put up last year, which is something like $20 million of the profits, he'll end up with that same income. >> but aren't with we in the same position we were when the financial crisis first hit and we talked about all the lessons we would learn and all the hand wringing we did. aren't we really back, deja vu here again? >> thank you, michael, you're absolutely right. nothing is going to change on wall street. bernie sanders is absolutely right, because the incentive system on wall street has not changed. bankers and traders on wall street are rewarded to take risks with other people's money. you saw that with the chief investment office at jpmorgan chase. that's why they took these crazy risks. until we make these bankers and traders and executives of wall street firms have real skin in the game, again, like they used to when they were private partnerships, nothing is going to change on wall street. >> wow, you're down with opc, other people's cash. william cohen, thank you so very much. >> my pleasure, thank you. remember to answer tonight's question there at the bottom of the screen and share your thoughts on twitter @edshow.
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i want to know what you think. up next, austerity now or austerity ow? the real risk romney's plan poses to teachers, cops, and firefighters. we'll be right back. but with advair, i'm breathing better so now i can take the lead on a science adventure. advair is clinically proven to help significantly improve lung function. unlike most copd medications, advair contains both an anti-inflammatory and a long-acting bronchodilator, working together to help improve your lung function all day. advair won't replace fast-acting inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than twice a day. people with copd taking advair may have a higher chance of pneumonia. advair may increase your risk of osteoporosis and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking advair. if you're still having difficulty breathing, take the lead. ask your doctor if including advair
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coming up on the ed show, mitt romney says it's absurd to say his plans will kill jobs for public workers. we'll break down just how his policies would cut funding for teachers, firefighters, and cops. will race play a factor in this year's election? a new study shows it did have an effect on the 2008 results. we'll bring you the details. and his story became the inspiration for the movie "goodfellas." later we'll take a look back at the life of mobster turned informant henry hill. share your thoughts on twitter at #edshow. we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] you sprayed them.
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welcome back. here's pop quiz. would mitt romney's economic plan kill jobs for teachers, firefighters and police officers? here's what mitt thinks. >> well, that's a very strange accusation. of course, teachers and firemen and policemen are hired at the local level and also by states. the federal government doesn't pay for teachers, firefighters, or policemen. so, obviously, that's completely absurd. >> now, that's what he says, but here are the facts. romney's plan would cut billions of dollars a year in funding for teachers, firefighters, and police officers. and he would do it on day one. let's start with jobs for teachers. the federal government reportedly pays for about 11% of the nation's public school costs. the money comes from programs like title 1 and the individuals with disabilities education act. it comes from no child left
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behind too. all of those federal programs fund the hiring and training of teachers. let's talk about the police. the community-oriented policing service program, or cops, has been directly funding police hires with federal dollars since 1994. the congressional research service estimates 117,000 officers were hired through cops last year. again, that's all federal dollars. firefighters get hired through federal grants under something called the staffing for adequate fire and emergency response program. about 3,400 firefighters will get hired this year, thanks to federal dollars. here's where it gets tricky. mitt romney wants to shrink government and cut programs and he wants to do it on his first day in office, but he won't be specific. so greg sargent at "the washington post" asked the center on budget and policy priorities to analyze what we do know about romney's cuts. the center calculates that romney's budget would require a 29% cut across the board.
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so federal programs that fund teacher, police, and firefighter jobs would take a $12 billion hit. if romney doesn't cut those, he's going to have to squeeze other programs, like medicare. there are two things to remember here, my friends. first, federal money does hire teachers, cops, and firefighters. second, romney's cuts could be devastating to the people we depend on the most. let's bring in rt rybak, welcome to the show. >> good to be here. >> now, given all the things we've just helped the american public understand, how could romney be so wrong on this? >> well, first off, it's pretty remarkable that aguy running for president wouldn't know that the federal government actually uses resources to put cops and firefighters on the street and teachers in classrooms. that happens normally. it happened especially when the economy collapsed. stop and think about this. if the president walked into office when the bush economy
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collapsed, the president delivered a stimulus program that helped us put police on the street in minneapolis and police across the country. those programs continued. there's something called the safer grant that we just got that put six firefighters on the street in minneapolis, and that's true across the country. now, i guess i can understand why mitt romney wouldn't seem to know about it, because i met with a group of massachusetts mayors a few months back, and they just said that this governor romney was, frankly, clueless about how to work with cities and local services. the most basic form of government is to educate a kid, to keep your streets safe, to keep your house from burning down. you bet we should have a partnership on that. it's not flush times, but the truth is mitt romney would remove cops from the street, firefighters from the street, teachers from the classrooms. i consider that dangerous. >> yeah, pretty much dangerous. how much do you think -- go ahead, i'm sorry. i was going to ask you, how do
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you think -- go on. >> well, the thing that's happened that in tough times, mayors have to make tough decision. we've all had to cut back. there's no doubt about it. you know, we're 4,100 employees in minneapolis when i took over, and sadly, we have 3,700. we've all cut back and had to make tough choices. what happened, however, is the president stepped up and said, look, in these tough times, let's help you hire back a firefighter whose job was lost or put a teacher back in a classroom. that's what was important. and it's so important to remember during the election that mitt romney can stand on his high horse and pretend what he wants done. the president came into a crisis. he lifted out a hand to mayor who is deliver services to cities across the country. i'm down here at the mayor's conference in orlando. we all get that. mitt romney doesn't. and that's why i don't think he should be president. >> let me ask you this then, what's at stake, then, for him to make that denial? because obviously there's some political capital to be derived from such an assertion. so you're telling us that local governments depend a great deal
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on federal dollars to provide support. his denial of it obviously has some political advantage. what is it can? >> i think mitt romney's trying to paint this picture that he's a "job creator," who in the private sector created all these jobs and government doesn't create jobs. there are two problems with that. number one, he laid off a whole boat load of people when he was in the private sector. and by the way, when he was in massachusetts, he did the same thing to the firefighters, the teachers, and the police officers. so what really matters is if you like your cop, if you like your firefighter, if you like your teacher, in tough times, you have a president who epphelped p them on the job and you have a guy running for president in mitt romney who took them off the job. pretty clear choice to me. >> no doubt. r.t. rybak, thanks so much. a former rick scott administration official is blowing the whistle on florida's voter purge. he reveals the operation was
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welcome back to "the ed sho show". senator barack obama won the presidency with 53% of the vote, a healthy 7 percentage points more than senator john mccain. mr. obama won a larger margin of the white vote than any democratic presidential candidate since jimmy carter. but in an analysis of google searches shows that race was a
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factor in the 2008 election. according to a "new york times" article written by a doctoral candidate in economics at harvard university. the author, seth stevens, analyzes google searches to determine where racial animus is most heavily concentrated in the united states. he says the heaviest racially charged search rates turned up in western virginia, western ohio, upstate new york, and southern mississippi, for example. the voter compared that to areas candidate obama may have underperformed in the actual election and found a direct correlation. in fact, he claims racial animus caused president obama 3 to 5% of the popular vote. let's turn to ari melber, correspondent for "the nation" magazine and a good man. racial animus is not something easily detected in polls, because respondents try to hide it. but with google, we're revealing our true selves, or so the thinking goes. so people are caught unawares, off guard, and they're revealing
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their true selves. is there something to that? do you think there's something to this study that reveals the true inclinations of human being when it comes to race? >> yeah, i think what we see online and what's so interesting about that data here is that the study looked at the incidence of terms, like the "n" word, which it turns out appears a lot more in people's google searches than it does out of their speech in public. it appears as commonly as laker or migraine, which are commonly googled words. the old study in "the new yorker" cartoon was a dog surfing the web, and it says, j online, no one knows you're a dog, and no one would know if you're a racist dog either. so that's something we see from this study that is fascinating. and the study shows that there's correlation, not necessarily causation, that in areas where searching these racially derogatory terms, that in that area senator obama was
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underperforming compared to other areas. >> and there are other variables to be considered here. so would you consider other variables in judges whether the conclusions are correct? are there other elements that play here that you think, well, might mitigate against the conclusion or at least make it a little bit more complicated? >> i do. i think for starters we have this electoral college, which is very undemocratic. so a huge effect on turnout and how people vote is whether they think they're in a very contested area. so we have a lot of states that are less contested and where you might see someone underperforming with, because there's a says that your vote didn't matter. which might also correlate with the search terms and other things. the other point is if you look at what underperformance means, in this study, what you basically have is a thesis that obama would have gotten more votes. you hit the nail on the head in the opening. i worked on john mccain's campaign. so for all the talk, barack obama did do well against -- among voters who happen to be white. and the study says that there
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actually should have been more something in the order of a 17-point margin for obama. well, here the researchers, the political science of this research may not be as good as our just good old politics, which i don't think most politicos think there would have been that. reagan in his re-election against mondale got an 18-point margin. and i don't think most people looked at john mccain whose formidability was on par with walter mondale. >> so the writer is saying without racial animus, president obama would have had 83% instead of 53%. so he raises the question of racial animus might be less overall after four years of the country being familiar with a black person. do you think that obama's presence has instigated greater acceptance, or in one sense, has instigated a greater backlash against black people? >> i think it's backlash and i think there's a very important point here, and ed schultz has talked about it on the show, and so have you, which is there was
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a political benefit to john mccain and some of the republicans suppressing some of that energy for a general election audience going into 2008. the language was, there were exceptions, but it was generally, i would argue, better than what we saw in 2009 and 2010, when there were appeals to a narrower audience, a midterms audience, and some elements of the tea party. i think part of the tea party is concerned about big government and is not a racial component, and other parts we've seen, unfortunately, have a big racial component. so what we've seen is the shape of the electorate has an incredible effect on the pressures that are brought to bear. now we're back into a general electorate model. so i think mitt romney, for pure self-interest, wants to go down the same roads. and that's the last point i would make. you can have racial problems without people literally voting against you on race. the delegitimatization of this president and policiesto do with race, like health care -- >> and the birther -- >> exactly. that's an area we've seen race
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play out. it may not hurt him in the voting, but it's definitely constrained the way we talk about his agenda and ultimately his ability to break through to the public. >> ari melber, thanks so much. there's a lot more coming up. stay tuned. >> quit blaming the president from four years ago. >> the president is taking his jobs plan to the people again, and republicans can't stand it. >> nobody wants to hear him whining and complaining. >> the big panel takes on the republican sabotage next. >> 87% minorities. if you're going through that in a fair way, that's happening. >> rick scott continues to embarrass himself on his failed voter purge. >> the right way of doing it has been the way we're doing it. >> and he was the mafia i con between one of the great movies of all-time. mafia foot soldier turned fbi informant henry hill has died of natural causes. we'll take a look back tonight. >> you got out of line, you got whacked. everybody knew the rules.
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tomorrow, president obama will make the case for another term in order to undo the damage done by the bush administration. reuters reports that mr. obama will argue that a romney presidency will bring the country back to the failed policies of president bush. romney surrogate tim pawlenty was dispatched to attack president obama's approach. >> president obama, including in his speech tomorrow, just goes back and blames president bush. it's like the old garth brooks song, you know, "long neck bottle, let go of my hand." quit blaming the president from four years ago. he'd had the helm, the con, the control for four years. nobody wants to hear him whining and complaining about what somebody did or didn't do four or five years ago. he's the president. we're not going to re-elect him because he got a participation ribbon. you actually have to do something. he's the participation ribbon president. >> i don't know. it seems it's the wrong country song. it could be, you know, george
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strait, all the exes live in texas, that's why i live in d.c. let's bring in msnbc contributors jimmy olsen and krystal ball. pawlenty fails to mention obstructionism. jim jimmy, krystal, guy, how is this an effective argument for the right wing? >> i don't disagree with tim pawlenty. i don't think we should be running against george bush. i think the country already looks at george bush's presidency as pretty much a debacle. instead, let's vilify the people that are actually the villains. let's look at the senate republicans. democrats take over the senate, and i think we have a chart for this, right, from talking points memo. democrats take over the senate, and what happens? filibusters jump, in the 111th congress, in the 80s per congress, to 137. and in the 112th congress, we're already at 87. every single bill is being filibustered. the only thing they're not
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filibustering, post office namings. in the house, the president goes before the congress, calls them into session, sends up a jobs bill, addresses the nation. they pass two pieces of a massive jobs bill. and then people are sitting around going, where are the jobs? well, i'll tell you where the jobs are. they're sitting in congress, 535 of them, of which half of them are republicans, and they're the only ones that care about their own jobs. it's kind of embarrassing. they're stopping him at every step of the way. >> krystal, do you think that's an effective strategy, perhaps, to shift the way jimmy williams has suggested, from a focus on bush to the failed practices of present republicans that is more of a powerful target? >> well, i agree in a sense. i think that is the right approach, and give the american people some credit, too. you know, a recent survey, a recent focus group in ohio and pennsylvania found that they by and large understood that a lot of the problems we were facing were because of the bush administration. so we don't necessarily have to keep hammering that point. but i think the president has been making the case, that congress has been obstructionist, that they have
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failed to pass the american jobs act, that they have failed to act on the economy. and the american people, i think, understand that as well. but we need to be more forceful in pushing that point. you know, when the jobs numbers came out recently, that still showed private sector jobs growth, but not anywhere near what we want or what we need. that is not a reflection on the president's policies. the president hasn't been able to pass anything for the past two years, since the republican congress was sworn in. that is really a judgment on the republican obstructionism, which, unfortunately, for the american people, has been successful in slowing growth. >> all right. so, guy, that's two for obstructionism. are you going to make it a trilogy here? i feel there's not going to be a third vote here. do you agree that republicans are intentionally sabotaging the economy? >> well, there's two separate issues here. and i would be delighted to go back and debunk some of this obstructionism canard language that we just heard. but i want to go back to your original question, which had to do with president obama and this
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apparent new strategy to go back and attack president bush. i think the irony here, at least from a messaging standpoint, is that this president's re-election slogan is one word -- forward. and it looks like he's intent to look backwards in these recriminations and blame at the previous president wi. so that's the irony. the more substantiative problem, i think he has is an interview he gave with matt lauer in 2009 when he said, if we don't get the done, meaning we turn the economy around in the next 3 1/2 years, we're looking at a one-term proposition. and just today his own white house press secretary said this economy has not recovered. so this is his own standard that he's up against, and i think looking back to his predecessor and trying to assess blame and point the finger totally contradicts his own slogan, and i don't think the american people are going to be too interested if that. >> guy, to your point, i think this election very much does turn on the economy, as you stated, but republicans understand that, which is why they have a great incentive to do everything they can to stand
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between nonrecovery. and i know that you're a free market guy and believe in the power of incentives. their incentives are very much in that direction. >> well, let me ask this question. >> i disagree. >> guy, let me say this. given what both jim and krystal have said, and about the canards you want to demythologyize or deconstruct, on the other hand, are you going to actually deny that out of their own mouths, when they've indicated that their very first, you know, if you will, responsibility was to keep obama from becoming a second termer, then obstructionism is an easy assignment after that, because their goal is to roll back anything he does. out of their own mouths they say that. how can you not acknowledge that? >> let's address that point by point. first of all, i reject the entire premise. i believe that virtually everyone in this town both parties, look at 25 million americans out of work or giving up, are suffering. paul krugman called america's
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current economic condition a depression. everyone in this town wants to help fix that -- >> but we aren't talking about premises, we're talking about what they actually said. we only have a few seconds left. what about what they said? they said, our job is to keep him from becoming a second-term president. >> mitch mcconnell said, that the senate republican leader. >> and newt gingrich and others on their inauguration day. >> of course republicans want to defeat a democrat president, stunning, right -- >> but what about the filibuster numbers, guy? >> let me -- i would be happy to answer these questions. there are two problems with the obstructionism -- >> there have been a record number of filibusters in this particular congress. it's not just about rhetoric, it's about procedure -- >> can i finish? >> all right, go on. >> the numbers are the numbers. >> let me first of all point out that the republican -- the jobs act that you guys talked about, didn't just die in the republican house, it died in the democrat senate, not because of a filibuster. the democrats were on record admitting that they did not have a simple majority to pass this president's job act in its entirety, even though the republicans did pass five
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elements of the president's jobs act. that's point one. point two, and this is so crucial -- >> we've got to hurry up. >> the white house is pretending like the first half of this presidency didn't exist, when democrats had full, huge majorities in both houses to do anything they wanted, republicans could not have sabotage ordinary obstructed anything if -- >> yeah, and their policies -- >> i would love for us to have more time -- >> they passed obama care. >> we'll reconvene this panel and get a hat trick out of you somehow. >> let's do it. >> thank you all so very much. a former florida secretary of state reveals major flaws in the state's voter purge operation. we'll have the latest, next. not once in my life
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the detected voter fraud you
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prosecuted and put people in jail for may be one number, but there's a lot of voter fraud out there you can never catch because it's so easy to do. >> so voter fraud statistics are limited only as much as your imagination? >> welcome back. that was "the daily show" taking aim at governor rick scott's plan to purge 2,600 voters from florida's voting rolls. it's caused a lawsuit from the department of justice and bitter fighting within the state. now in an interview with the "miami herald," former florida secretary of state kurt browning reveals how mismanaged the plan was from the start. he says the trouble began after homeland security denied florida's request for its citizenship database. so the elections division compared its database with the department of highway safety to try and find noncitizen voters. browning knew cross referencing two huge databases would only compound the errors with within them. the list they ended up with consisted of 87% minority voters. how convenient for the governor. browning said, "i didn't feel
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comfortable rolling this initiative out. something was telling me this isn't going to fly. we didn't have our is dotted and our ts crossed when i was there." he didn't trust entitled to. that are noncitizens. they've voted, that exacts race. >> the department of justice
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will almost certainly use this against them in their lawsuit. so now it's only a matter of time before florida wises up and stops their purge. or they are forced to by the department of justice. tonight in our survey, i asked you, do you believe risky behavior by wall street will drive us into another financial crisis? 99% say yes, 1% say no. his life was the basis for the movie "good fellas," and now the mobster turned fbi informant as dice. is it done?
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as far back as i can remember i always wanted to be a gangster. ♪ i know i'd go from rags to riches ♪ >> to me being a gangster was better than being president of the united states. >> never rat on your friends. and always keep your mouth shut. >> being somebody in the neighborhood that was full of nobodies. >> hey, mom, what do you think? >> you look like a gangster. >> he was a brooklyn mobster turned fbi informant. the world got to know henry hill through actor ray liota's portrayal of him in the movie "good fellas." >> what are you doing? >> what? >> what do you do? >> i'm in construction. >> after a storied and troubled life, henry hill died after a long illness at age 69.
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hill wasn't born into the mob but fell in love with the culture at an early age. >> in my neighborhood where i came from in brooklyn, they're the guys with the suits and beautiful rings and women. >> your father was getting up, going to work? >> yeah. the whole block was like normalville. >> after becoming a high roller wise guy, and an associate of the crime family, hill was arrested in 1980 your drug trafficking. fearing for his life, he agreed to cooperate with the feds. his testimony led to 50 convictions. hill ended up in the witness protection program. hill was eventually knocked out of witness protection after committing several crimes but soon got to revel in the notority that martin scorsese's masterpiece "good fellas" gave him, based on the book "wise guy." documented hill's life in the book and believed henry hill was an ideal but troubled subject.
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>> i just think it was very difficult for him, i know, to go from the life of a gangster into the life of, as he says in the book, i get to live the rest of my life like a shnook. >> hill's life ended in a los angeles hospital. his partner telling cbs news hill went out pretty peacefully for a good fella. i'm joined by vito, private detective and former undercover organized crime investigator. thank you for coming on, my friend. >> thank you, michael. >> now, hill was lion iclionized for the life he lived. did he turn his life around after the glamour and glory of the crime life he led? >> yes, he did, michael. i had the pleasure the last few years of speaking at panel discussions across the country with him. former fbi guys, former mob associates. he did a lot of good. i've been in his company when he would tell young people that came up to him and said, henry, you're my idol, i want to be just like you.
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he would really let them have it and say, you don't want to be like me. live a good, clean life. stay away from organized crime. he traveled the country to police departments and fbi teaching them the is and outs of organized crime. monitor it better, how they could watch. i'm proud of the henry hill i knew the last few years. >> no doubt. there was a great deal to repent for i suppose because he admitted he was obsessed with mob culture at an early age. why do you think our culture in general, can i add myself, is fascinated with these lives? >> i love watching the movies, myself, but, you know, it's glamorized. and henry hill is the first to tell you it's a horrible life. i worked undercover organized crime. i see what happens to people. most of them wind up dead or in jail for the rest of their lives. it's -- and young guys get caught up in that. they want to be just like these guys. and hopefully more guys like a henry hill and myself will tell these guys, it's a dead end
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street, mike. >> sure. look, lie cut a deal with the government, he saved his own life. how valuable is that testimony he gave? >> it's extremely valuable. he put 50 people in jail, 50 people away. not only that, what you need to understand, and the viewers, he would have been killed anyway. so you have a choice of being killed by your associates, or working with the feds. and that's what he chose to do. >> wow. 20 seconds left. he lived the rest of his life under his own name. sold paintings on ebay. boy, is that norman rockwell of the gangster life? >> yeah, he enjoyed doing that. people would line up. believe me. i was at many events. they lined up outside. >> all right. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> that's "the ed show." i'm michael eric dyson in for ed schultz. ezra klein in is filling in for rachel maddow tonight. good evening, ezra. > good evening, michael. how you doing? >> doing fine, my friend. good to see you. >> and you. thank you, michael. thanks to you at home