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tv   The Cycle  MSNBC  July 10, 2012 12:00pm-1:00pm PDT

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charlotte. on "the cycle" today kitchen table politics. the president pays a house call to iowa voters. we're serving up straight talk about what this election should really be about. >> i'm toure. black people are 12% of the population and half of all aids cases. some think we could end the epidemic now. >> i'm krystal ball. we're going i crazy. is it too late to dial back our online addictions. >> i'm steve kornacki. we have the predictions for the elections. take 31 votes to repeal obama care and call me in the morning. i'm playing truth teller when it comes to honesty in america. it's tuesday, july 10th. you're in "the cycle." the gang is here at our kitchen table. i hope you all like the redecorating. we want to started with real issues americans not in the 1%
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are facing at their own kitchen tables. here is president obama's version earlier today from iowa. >> we thought about how far we had come and the fact that our lives were a testament to the fundamental american idea that no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, no matter where you come from, america is a place where you can make it if you try. america is a place where you can make it if you try. >> so being new yorkers, i know that our kitchen tables might not look like those of most of america. in fact, i don't have a kitchen table. but all four of us grew up middle class, yet we had opportunities to move up, do better than our parents. do we still have that sense of hope for our kids? >> i mean, you know, we have the sense of hope for our children, but what i see, you can't just make it if you try. the american dream is dead. what the american dream -- >> the american dream is dead?
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>> what the american dream was all about was intergenerational mobility, if you work hard and go to school, you can do better than your parents did. more and more, you will be in the class that your parents were in. that has almost become completely -- you can't get past that. that's the death of the american dream, if you're stuck in the class that your father was in, your parents were in, that's what they have in europe. >> i'm hopeful about the american dream. >> you can't deny that it's a troubling trend. i echo toure's thoughts in a way. i have a 4-year-old daughter. i don't worry so much for her because if we don't like the schools in our district, we could send her to private school. we have the means to move to a better district. but for a lot of people, they don't have those opportunities. i think that's the problem. it's the equality of opportunity that has fallen. i was looking at a study here in new york which is where we live but it's representative of trends nationwide. in education, if you are a minority or you are in the lower income brackets, you are much more likely to go to a failing
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school and you're essentially tied to -- your zip code ties you to a failing education. >> the four of us at the table are an example of the american dream that's getting harder to achieve. incomes in the top 1% grew 275% in three decades. there's this recent study called the great gatsby curve nick naeld after the classic. it shows higher national income inequality leads to lower economic mobility. to take a line from the great grat sbi, the rich get richer and the poor get children. in this case 40% of those children living in poverty will never escape it. poor forever is the focus of a new bloomberg business week article by esmay dupres. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> you talk about two areas, one
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wealthy and one impoverished. this is the kind of income inequality that you discuss here that most of us think about in sort of developing nations like brazil where there's no middle class. is this where you're saying we're headed? >> right. that's what we're seeing economists say, bridgeport, extreme pockets of wealth butting up against one another. we can learn lessons about what it's like to be there. >> she's not saying we're going there. she's saying we're already there. among rich nations united states has the highest income inequality and the least amount of mobility. >> right, i understand. it's a huge distinction to say that bridgeport and greenwich are representative of the entire united states. these are two pockets that happen to abutt each other and
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be a really good example of this income inequality. i don't know that they're representative. let me ask you this, esma, there was a piece in a magazine called "for richer or for poorer," she writes that today's millionaires don't stay millionaires for very long anymore and that lower income earners who may have a smaller share of income today than they did, say, in 1990, but their absolute income shyer. she quotes economist steven kaplan saying income is not a zero-sum game. somebody else's income doesn't come at your expense. these numbers don't have automatic implications for the 99%. put that in context for us. is that true? is he wrong? >> not all economists believe the heightening inequality is going to be the problem. it's not clear if mark zuckerberg cashes out his stock options tomorrow, it's going to hurt us.
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what we do know is inequality has been rising since 1979. we've seen incomes diverge, the rich get richer, the poor gets poorer. we've seen mobility in the u.s. not necessarily change over time. it's not as great as we once thought it was. it's harder for us to rise through the ranks. 40% of kids born to poverty will stay into poverty. 40% born into wealth will stay into wealth. if you're a black child born of middle income parents, half will fall into poverty. there's racial disparate as well. >> you talk about this not being a zero sum game. i look at it this way. we talk about the top 1%. you can break that down further and look at the top .1%. their inflation adjusted after-tax incomes from 1979 to the middle of the last decade, that went up like 400% while
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people in the middle went 20%. you look at who those people are and ask yourself are they directly taking away from the middle class? maybe not. what kind of work do they do? is that the kind of money that builds an economy, creates jobs? that's not the case. 43% of them are executives at nonfinancial companies, 18% in finance, 12% in real estate, lawyers. these are people who have done very well for themselves. but the wealth they have created is not benefiting others. >> it's not a zero sum game as you're saying. when you are -- david brooks talks about this today, when you're making a lot of money, you have more time to spend time with your children, read to them, and the previous generation, the wealthy people spent less time. that amount has grown. people who are poorer, their amount of time is lesser, especially in the first three years of the child's life when it's really important.
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>> that goes to quality of life. >> we're not even living in the same places. we're living in separate neighborhoods, going to separate schools. that manifests in our parenting as well and the opportunities that our kids have. that's the problem is the equality opportunity that's not there. >> we talked about the graphic of a four-year college degree, a powerful driver of economic mobility that esmay talks about. if you're born poor, you have almost no chance to get into a school unless you can get one of these economic lottery tickets where you get a scholarship. this is -- it's -- college is no longer a stepping stone to the middle class than it once once. >> i think she raises a good point. you talked about ways in which inequality can be addressed. you say that simply throwing money at poor people is not going to solve the problem.
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welfare westboucan be a prison. and you're quoting someone else that good inequality is needed to create incentives. what are some of the solutions to this rising ep dimmic? >> there's a complicated topic. there isn't one policy solution. we see american candidates, barack obama and president romney -- >> not quite yet. >> we know who you're talking about. we see them talking about mobility and the importance of the american dream. rob portman was talking about how he rose to the american dream. these candidates know how it's important to talk about this to the voters. they want somebody that is going to help them propel into the middle class. what wee we see with the great gatsby curve is america is a country with high inequality and low mobility. it's not that it changed over time. it's just far worse than we thought it was. it is hard to rise from trangs. i will note that education is still a really important driver. it will quadruple a poor
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person's chances of making it to the top. education cannot be understated. >> thank you esme duprez. thanks for joining us. they might not get much done, but they put on a damn good show. we're putting it through the spin cycle as we roll on for tuesday, july 10th. ♪ [ kimi ] atti and i had always called oregon home.
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health care reform has ended. >> not only will this legislation grow the size of government limiting freedom. >> we'll spend at least six
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hours debating this. but not one minute considering a republican replacement. that's because there isn't one. >> that's why i was so heartbroken with the recent health care decision by the united states supreme court. >> let's not repeal it. i think that would be bad for our health. >> another healthy debate on the house floor today. that's ahead of the impending 31st vote to repeal president obama's signature piece of legislation, health care reform. that brings us to today's spin cycle. to me it looked like they were going through the motions. i guess after 31 times that starts to happen. >> it doesn't feel fresh? >> not as fresh as the fruit on our kitchen table right now. >> it looks lovely. >> less fresh than this fruit, then it's dead. >> what is interesting, though, there is something new happening here. the conventional wisdom is the republicans control the house. they want to keep voting against this because it riles up the base. think think it's a political winner because health care hasn't been too popular in the polls. the democratic congressional
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campaign committee, they do campaigns all across the country. they are targeting seven incumbent house members who are going to vote to repeal this with this ad which i'd like to play right now. >> your member of congress may vote to repeal important health care benefits for everyday americans, but you protected generous health care programs for congress. tell mayor rebono mack she shouldn't repeal ours if she wants to repeal hers. >> so mary bono is one of the seven republicans being targeted. they're saying hey, republicans, you think this is a political winner. we'll turn the tables and say you're voting to repeal popular things. the cynical thing is what we played is a youtube video. it's not a paid political ad. i'm wondering if light of the supreme court ruling, do democrats think they have room
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to maneuver? >> i don't want to weigh in on whether it's a tin cynical youtube strategy or not. i will say i think they should have taken this approach much sooner. what is the message you're spending the the american people. when you pass a bill, you spend a lot of time fighting for it. you pass the bill and then run away from it. essentially the only people for the last year messaging on republican up until the supreme court decision were republicans. it's no surprise that public opinion polling hasn't been that great, and we've seen that changing since the supreme court health care decision as people are seeing democrats making the argument for the bill that they passed. >> still pretty unpopular. i think essentially all this does is really admit or acknowledge on the part of democrats that there's a real chance that republicans will repeal this bill. if they're not taking this seriously after we're all joking about the 31st vote to repeal
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health care -- >> when? >> 2012. >> if romney wins, absolutely. >> after november. >> the thing is that the obama people are trying to cast romney as the past, trying to bring america into the past. they're talking about the long past. the 1950s or something. this continues that narrative of the republicans live in the past. it's the recent past. we've already finished this health care debate and you want to go back to that? you don't want to move forward into the future where we're going to enact this? it definitely plays into democratic hands. it may rile up the republican base which was already going to come home anyway. >> it does. >> but does it win with independence? >> this is an interesting question. we've been putting up the statistics on the screen. we have this new poll out today that puts the president horse race at 47-47. it asks the question in light of the supreme court ruling, are you for or against the health care law? 47-47. it's gone up eight and matches up perfectly with the
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presidential race. what that's tells me is the effect of the supreme court ruling is to get in line. if you're for obama, you're for the law. if you're for romney, you're against the law. >> you think we'll see a lot of congressional democrats getting up in support of obama care as we get closer to november? >> i think so. even if president obama wins which i think there's a strong chance he will. but even if he does, we've seen from what texas governor rick perry and other republican governors mostly are doing. there's ways to undermine this law without repealing it. if you don't fight for it and educate the american public about it, you are going to lose some of the effectiveness of it. we're going to shift gears here. there's a second round of governor hearings for florida's stand your ground task force, a 17-member committee with the
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shooting death of trayvon martin. jennifer carroll is the chairman who voted for the law back in 2005. that's the point i would make here. you look at this task force. >> dog and pony show. >> the response of the governor had to be something. the number ship of this task force was picked by the lieutenant governor. state senate president voted for the law. the national legislative exchange group that used florida's law as a model, i'm looking and saying there's not going to be a change to the law coming out of these hearings. >> probably not. >> this is one of the most frightening laws in america to me right now. we've seen a rise in homicides in states. >> no, wrong, false. >> no. that is true. >> false, false. >> the thing that we really see, it seems to me and many other people this is a protect white people from black people law. that's ultimately all it does.
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it's extraordinary rare to see a black people shoot a white person and invoekt stand your ground where on the other side it seems to cloak lots of white people who have shot black people in strange situations. you even have the situation of marissa alexander, a woman who had just given birth who shot into the ceiling to protect herself from her abusive husband, even though she was in the own home, couldn't leave the home without getting past him, because of mandatory minimums she's doing 20 years in florida for trying to protect herself. any situation for stand you ground i would think it would be that one. >> it puts an unfair burden on local law enforcement to make these decisions on the spot. i think that's one aspect of this. >> stand your ground is a great law. it is not always used or invoked properly. it corrects an earlier law that forced you to retreat before defending yourself which is absolutely outrageous. >> you hear it's going to deter crime. there's absolutely no evidence
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that that's the case. there's a new texas a&m study that says it does increase homicides. it's unfortunate that this conversation is not really happening in florida right now. >> i support you on castle doctrine, if you're in your home, you should be able to protect yourself. stand your ground extends to wherever you are in the public space. >> this was not stand your ground. he did not use the law correctly. >> i know toure will forgive me. before we go to the break, i want to give a nod to toure and his book "who is afraid of post blackness" out today in paperback. >> congrats. >> very exciting. >> liberty, science or religion? meet a writer who says we're always searching for more. why is that? we'll ask the author in our guest spot next on "the cycle."
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. ref reday it seems like we're blasted with bad news. it's no wonder most of us feel we're in a constant search for answers. as it turns out, crisis, decorrespondence, disillusionment sets us on a universal quest. in the guest spot today is joe laconte, historian and professor at the king's college who explores everyone's journey. thanks for joining us. our new book is "the searchers," a quest for faith in the valley of doubt. you start with a passage from luke 24 about this road to ameus, you use it as jauming off point from corruption in dhur ch, counterfeit faith.
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why this passage? what did this mean to you and how is it illustrative of this. >> it really was a conversation two followers of jesus had days after his execution. i think it's also a tremendously powerful metaphor for all our lives. these two guys, they are in a state of disillusionment, doubt, discouragement and probably despair. so they're heading to ammaeus which is probably home for them to get perspective. it seems to me all of us, we're either on that road or we'll be on it pretty soon in the sense that some of our most deeply held convictions, beliefs, ideals, they're going to be challenged, shaken, maybe our dreams are going to turn to powder and we'll need perspective. i think there are tremendous insights in this passage from luke about how to move from this place of doubt and disillusionment into faith and hope.
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>> i notice you weave a lot of cultural references into the book. there's john wayne, elvis, "the x files" even the liam knee sen movie "taken." i wonder if the rationale is, is it sort of essential to be talking about faith, writing about faith, to incorporate culture and put it in a modern context? >> i think that's some of it. what i'm trying to show is the various themes about grief, about doubt, disillusionment, the idea of resurrection, the poison of religion, these themes, they are just -- they're in our own culture, they're in our lives. we're going to kind of need to see how the concept from the scripture can actually connect to our everyday practical real life experiences. i found myself increasingly frustrated by sermons in church that didn't seem to connect the scripture really to my own life. as a layman, i wanted to take a
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shot at it. >> you mentioned the poison of religion and you're critical in some ways of the professional church. you quote, also from pascal and say men never do so evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. on the other hand, some of the greatest and most humanitarian works are also done in the name of religious conviction. where do things go awry? are there warning signs or telltale signs there? >> great question. what i call the poison of religion, and we have the cynics out there. i'm trying to reject two extreme views, the completely cynical view which says religion poisons everything, that there's nothing good about religious belief. that's the cynical view. let's reject it. i think even within the christian community, that doesn't take the problem of greed and selfishness and the will to power seriously enough and that's what i'm trying to get at at this chapter. so often what we have is really the will to power masquerading as piety.
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it's not just a christian problem or jewish or muslim problem. it's a human problem. christians have to be more candid about how that poison of religion, the will to power is still within the churches. it's a problem in our midst. >> joe, i think one of the problems we have today is that people are searching and finding what they want in celebrity that they end up sort of worshipping celebrity, as these people are gods, greater than normal human beings. when you talk about a john wayne and some of these other people, elvis and michael jackson, we could go on and on, the relation we're having, the relationship they used to have with a panoply of gods. >> i start with the death of rudolph valentino. 100,000 people turn out at the funeral home in manhattan to catch a glimpse of his body. when valentino died, a number of women committed suicide, holding up picture of valentino and committing suicide. these substitute deities seem to
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be this universal human experience. we have to ask the question what is it we're yearning for? what are we straining for at the human level, the societal level, even at the civilizational level, what are we striving for? >> i think joe is right. we typically are finding something and then wondering why are we searching for that. i find it once again an interesting sort of thing that you brought this book to the table, "the quest for faith in the valley of doubt" -- >> because i'm on that quest. >> you are in the valley of doubt. i am on that quest. i want to ask the professor about this. i'm on that quest and i openly admit i have not found the answers. i'm searching. we're all searching even if we look to science or religion to fill the holes, the gaps in our knowledge, we're on a search. some of us feel satisfied with how that search has turned out. some of us still are wanting and longing for more answers. the search shouldn't be a point
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of judgment. the fact that one is on a search, the fact that one has decided i haven't reached a farrakhan collusion, i think the search is a deeply emotional -- >> you self identify as an atheist which means not so much you're in a valley of doubt but that you have decided there is not a god. >> the distinction i use is -- i'm not an agnostic. i'm not saying i don't know. i formally believe there is not a god. i would love something to change my mind. i read a lot of this kind of stuff and i study this and talk to great people like joe about these issues. i have great conversations and i can't get enough of this. professor la kahn any. i'm not a believer and you talk about people like sam harris, and you discuss sort of the
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irrational or maybe emotional idea that people who believe might be crazy. you write, quote, we might wonder what kind of emotional personality can so easily condemn the vast majority of the world's population as a seething insane asylum. i love it. i am not in the camp that condemns believers. is there hope for someone like me? you talk about the universal experience of disillusionment. is there hope for someone like me. >> say no, joe. there's no hope for her. >> of course there's hope. s.e., what's so refreshing about you as an atheist, you are so much more respectful of religious believers than sometimes religious believers can be of atheists. i appreciate that about you. part of the hope you see in the story that can speak to you, these guys are not believers. when they're walking on the road, they're doubters, the messiah is dead and he ain't
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coming back. jesus leads them gently to a place of belief, but he doesn't coerce them. he doesn't intimidate them. he doesn't threaten violence. they have an argument. they have a conversation and they reason together and come to a place of faith. it seems to me that's part of the journey that you're on. >> i've often been called a douth thomas. we'll see where this journey goes. professor, thank you for joining us. appreciate it. i love the book. >> thanks for having me. up next, are our devices making us crazy? the man behind this awesome "newsweek" cover joining us live. as we take a quick break, this is "better weather" by my brother's band, good old war. i love it. brave knights!
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no blackberry, no iphone, facebook, twitter, computers at all? did that make you twitch? our obsession with all things digital is hitting new extremes. today the average teen gets or sends 3,700 text messages a month, double the number from five years ago. so as bad as we think we are, there are even worse. a third of us get online with our smart phones before we get out of bed. two out of three of us even report feeling phantom phone vibrations when they aren't ringing. i've totally had that happened. have we gone straight icrazy? that's the title of this week's "newsweek" story. with us is tony decopal who wrilts the internet is no longer a delivery tool but a whole new state of nature. thank you for joining us.
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>> thanks for having me. >> we are addicts at the this table. we're ready to admit every one of us checked our phones in the break, anxiously twitching waiting for the next commercial break so we can look at twitter again. what is all this stimulation doing to our brains? >> well, it's interesting that nobody questions the premise of the article. we are all checking our phones constantly. i keep expecting someone to say what got you enter interested in this subject? but it's self-evident. for the first time we're getting brain scans from neuro scientists showing that there is a remapping happening. as our environment changes, our brain changes. the results are concerning. in january chinese researchers compared the brains of internet addicts to the brains of other addicts, alcohol, drug addicts. they show similarities. so to be an internet addict is
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to have brain chemistry a bit like any other kind of addict. it's no longer a joke. >> how does that actually affect us in day-to-day life? >> what the researchers report is an increase in white matter in the brain, abnormal white matter which sounds ominous. it means nerve endings built for speed. so we become more rapid in our processing of information which sounds great until you talk to other researchers who compare it to electronic cocaine, and there are manic highs and depressive brittle lows. there are cycles that are mentally and physically exhausting. >> electronic cocaine is maybe too cool of a -- >> part of the problem is that it's not just that our brains become faster, but it becomes much harder to have long, uninterrupted deep thought to read a book or even a long article. what's happening is we're getting these quick shots of dopamine every time we get a tweet or we get a facebook or we
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interact with a website and it becomes very exciting. but you can't calm it down. i think back to when the internet was first coming up. what did we call it? the information super highway. it was a hamlet compared to the massive gigantic city we have now of the internet. we're living on this highway, and the information and stimulus comes so fast. it's just impossible to calm it down. it is bad for the brain. >> it's bad for the soul. >> it seems we're addicted to it for a reason. i can think of my own experiences, using a phone and having it with me next to my bed or at dinner. 95% of the time when i check with my e-mail or twitter, it turns out there was no reason to. >> so it's not necessary. >> but that 5% of the time when it's essential, it is truly essential. it's essential to my job.
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>> 95% of the time it's not. >> if i miss it, there are going to be serious consequences with my job. >> how much of our job -- we're not doctors, lawyers, cops. how much of our job requires us to be changed to our blackberries or iphone after 9:00 p.m. >> i may be talking to a very narrow -- my job is journalism and i was a news editor for a while. my job in journalism is to know when the major event happens as soon as it happens or if possible before it happens. if i'm at dinner and don't check this for 30 minutes and it happens at minute five, i'm in trouble. >> get out of here. get out of here. >> even if you're not a journalist or media person who has to be on twitter as part of your whole thing, people feel like there's a real consequence for them at work if they're not on top of it. there's a premium put on i saw your e-mail come through at midnight last night. people are impressed by that and it's a sign you're working hard all the time.
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>> tony taukts about fomo, fear of missing out. some of it is not the essential news we have to have for our job, but fear of lacking the information, like the ads where it's "that's so 49 seconds ago." >> tony, we are reliant on these devices for work and for life. what's the solution? >> we need to remind ourselves we are tools and we are in control of them. if you're not getting what you want to get out of your relationship with your blackberry, you should re-evaluate it. >> what if you're getting everything you want out of that relationship? >> that sounds terrible. >> it does sound terrible. that's a real problem, isn't it? when you feel like you are getting something real out of it, how do you change? >> what about these people who are the walking dead, you're walking down the sidewalk and they're looking at this thing, about to crash into them. >> that is me. >> i don't feel like i've solved my addiction problem, but i do have some interesting information. so thank you for joining us,
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tony. >> thank you. congrats on the new show. >> thank you so much. up next on a much more serious note we shift our focus to a silent and deadly epidemic. aids in black america. the new documentary investigating the crisis ahead on "the cycle." ♪ [ male announcer ] you've reached the age where you don't back down from a challenge. this is the age of knowing how to make things happen. so, why let erectile dysfunction get in your way? talk to your doctor about viagra. 20 million men already have. ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain; it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach, and abnormal vision. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. this is the age of taking action. viagra. talk to your doctor.
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but 50% of all americans infected with hiv. in washington, d.c. last year there were more people with aids than there were in rwanda or kenya or ethiopia. this is yet another reason why i say the house that is black america is on fire. while many may think aids is no longer a widespread problem, it remains an epidemic in black america fueled by prejudice, silence and stigma. some say the image of magic johnson living with aids make people feel it's no longer something to fear, compounding the problem. phil wilson, head of the black aids instituted and part of the gripping documentary tonight at 9:00 called "endgame: aids in black america" here's a peek. >> madge nick the frontcourt. >> magic johnson goes public and it was absolutely extraordinary. >> it wasn't just that he was a basketball legend. he was john black men next door. >> remember, no one wanted to be
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on a basketball court with magic johnson. >> i'm not cured. i've been taking my meds. i'm doing what i'm supposed to do. i'm living with this virus in my blood system and in my body. >> aids is god's curse to a homosexual life. i think it stinks in the nostrils of god. >> he doesn't get that god loves all his children. >> a powerful documentary. phil, i have to ask you first off, why is aids so much worse in black america? is it both cultural and medical? >> well, i think it's worse in black america primarily for two reasons. one, we got a slow start. the disease in the beginning was mischaracterized as a white gay disease. for the record, it never was a white gay disease. black people were disproportionately impact friday the beginning. as a result we were slow to respond to the disease. secondly, today, a disparity of resources and investment in the disease based on where you are and who you are.
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>> the documentary is called "endgame." aids has been part of our lives for so long. you think ending the epidemic is possible? >> i definitely think we have the beginnings of the tools to end the aids epidemic. the question of when we can end it, that question is asked and answered. the question is will we. will we use those tools in an effective way, an efficient way, a compassionate way? will we make both the human investment, the commitment investment and the financial investment to bring about the end of the epidemic? >> there's three things that make it seem to me it's going to be extraordinarily difficult. unprotected sex is still so prevalent. education around this issue is too little. the magic johnson piece i want to have you speak to. magic on espn earlier this year talked about how his success or his ability to live with aids for so long has confused many
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people into thinking the epidemic is not such a challenge anymore. we'll roll a clip of magic talking about that and get your response. >> the virus reacts differently in everyone. if you git, that don't mean you're going to do well. so i think that's where the curse comes in because they see me doing well. now people are not protecting themselves. >> magic has been a powerful ambassador for people with aids, but is his example sort of perverse part of the problem? >> no. magic is alive today. i'm alive today. i've been liveing with hiv for 2 years now because we are on treatment and so the message we have to get out to black folks is that it is possible to survive if you do something. it is possible for us to end this epidemic if we act. if we don't, if we don't do the things we need to do like fighting stigma, like raising
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aids awareness in our community, like raising the the hiv science literacy in our community, like getting people tested and on treatment, yeah, you're right. but if we do the things we need to do, there is hope. >> so, if you had all of the resources you had available, how would you put them to use? would this be a partnership with the school system, community centers? what would your sort of overarching vision be? >> the most important answer would be yes. my list would be to make sure this everybody knows their hiv status. there's no reason for people not to know their own hiv status. and knowing is a right and responsibility. knowing your partner's status can save your life. so number one, let's find out you're own hiv status. two, we should have treatment on demand in this country that anyone who is hiv positive that wants treatment should have
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access to treatment. we know today that a person like me who is hiv positive, if i am on treatment, which i am. and i suppress my viral load, i reduce the ability to transmit by 90%, that's huge. we create health care delivery system where people can have access to care and treatment and we get there. >> phbest of luck with your mission. airs tonight on pbs. it's a must watch. coming up next, s.e. says maybe honesty isn't always the best policy. more to come on "the cycle" when we come back. people have doubts about taking aspirin for pain. but they haven't experienced extra strength bayer advanced aspirin. in fact, in a recent survey, 95% of people who tried it agreed that it relieved their headache fast. visit fastreliefchallenge.com today for a special trial offer.
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full disclosure. seems like transparency and disclosure of campaign contributions or swiss bank accounts have been given immoral -- who would argue that more information could be a bad thing? for as much air time as disclosure and transparency are getting, tl little evidence that laying it all out there can change much. and full disclosure can make otherwise onerous transactions work better. maybe not. take for example president obama's new consumer protection bureau. the promise is that consumers need protecting from predatory lending and some of those protections should come in coercing lendi inin inin ining
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disclose more. when the federal reserve performed some experiments, the results were astounding. when brokers were required simply to explain they were working in their own interests and not the borrowers, borrowers trusted them more for being honest still without really understanding what was going on. score one for honesty, but that's hardly good news if the dwoel is create smarter consumers. being honest can actually engender trust while clouding the mind, but disclosure is less than effective means of fixing real world problems because merely requiring disclosure demands no further action. it can have affects when researchers in a joint study required r parkts to reveal conflicts of interest cht it actually encouraged those in the advisory role to give inflated advice, feel as though the virtue of that one disclosure
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morally ab solved them from giving truthful information. as much sun light may disinfect, it doesn't always encourage it to grow back again. for all the talk of increased regulations and more tranz pa parnsy, voters, consumers, patients and borrowers will have to get more educated about the big decisions they make. you guys get first crack at me now. >> i think you have, you have a good point there. >> thank you. >> the basic idea of we get the government we deserve and all those things, i agree, but you can't have the the kind of educated citizenry if you don't -- >> have the disclosure. >> disclosure in of itself isn't going to solve everything.
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if you want to know who these big donors are, these billionaires, corporations who are bankrolling these elections, i'm not saying information -- >> looks like you guys would say, folks like you guys would say that disclosing isn't enough and the system where campaign finance is concerned is still broken. >> there's no substitution for an informed electorate. some are arguing we should make all campaign contributions anonymous so that candidates don't know who they're getting money from so that they can't thenbidding, which is an interesting idea. >> martin, it's all yours. >> from your studies of the bible, you will no proverbs, an honest answer is like a kiss on the lips. good afternoon. it's tuesday, july the 10th and here's what's happening.