this morning my question. the complicated controversy over beyonce and jay-z in cuba. an intimate portrait of the most powerful sister combo in tennis. but first, the tax man cometh. but for whom does he come? good morning. i'm melissa harris-perry.

grumble, grumble, boo his, it is tax time. listen, i hear ya. i don't like doing my taxes. writing that check to the irs or even seeing how much i already paid is just ugh. whether you're the kind of taxpayer who shakeser her fist at the heavens and yelling about the man or you quietly tear your hair out in a late night turbo tax session that is probably going to happen tonight, we're all participating in that annual american ritual. i wonder, though, what really gets us down about tax season? i started asking, is there any bill that you enjoy paying? for some of us, that downpayment on a new house or even the monthly mortgage check is a point of pride. there's a sense of self-satisfaction in being able to meet that debit which finances your home and hearth. maybe for others, buying those back to school clothes and notebooks for your kids is the kind of damage that you happily do to your wallet or for the

luckier among us, maybe paying that preschool tuition that is literally an investment in the future, one that many college graduates have learned cannot be quantified in dollars and cents as much as an opportunity. speaking about that, why i can't say i love paying my student loans and yes, i am still paying my student loans, i don't actually mind it that much. the years i spent in college and graduate school are the most important investment i've ever made. of course, giving what we can to charity and to nonprofits actually feels pretty darn good. i mean, knowing that your hard earned dollars are going to something you choose to a good cause, that can be a unique pleasure. we don't mind paying for those things. maybe we can make taxes a bit more like giving to charity. or at least like paying the light bill. because in a certain way, that's exactly what it is. maintaining those collective utilities. as art 1, section 8, clause 1,

known as i'm not kidding. the taxing and spending clause of the constitution. the congress will shall the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, i am posts and excises and to pay the debts and general welfare for the united states. it's that general -- it's all around us. the roads and bridges we -- the army abroad. the public school teachers that educate our children. and while your tax dollars are at work constantly, it can sometimes feel like our dollars are getting eaten by a system? in fact the average america believes that the federal government wastes 51% of every dollar it spends. perhaps a lot of this frustration is coming from empirical evidence of the disrepair and waste you see around you. maybe it is also the mere feeling of frustration and lack of good information. there is no way around it. taxes are complicated. so complicated that the majority

of us aren't even doing our own taxes these days, preferring to farm them out to tax preparation or somebody else. i am not doing my own taxes. new research says it doesn't have to be this way. we can in fact, really fall in love with the form 1040. with a little bit of rebrand taxes can be adorable almost. the boston globe noted this week. a a recently published paper by two law school professors summed it up this way. if taxpayers were less scarred by the process, they would be less likely to seek out loopholes, put their money in tax shelters or simply try to cheat. if americans really understood where their tax dollars went, we might all have a better appreciation for a relationship to the government. but hey, that sounds like a good thing. so when you hear about president obama proposing nearly $60 billion in new tax revenue over the next ten years as part of

his 2014 federal budget, we should all jump for joy. if you still hate it, at least you could keep your vigilant self focused on how your government spends your money. at my table my morning is carmen wong or he can, president of alta wealth management who must be sleepy on the day before tax day. >> dean baker, co-director of the center for economic and policy research. lisa cook back from yesterday from michigan state university. she's professor of economics and a former member of president obama's council of economic advisers and josh barro, lead writer for the ticker, a blog on economics, finance and politics. he had a lot of stuff to say to me this week also but we wanted him at the table anyway. i want to start with you. i feel you've had a balanced approach to anything about sort of how liberals on the one hand get too anxious about the idea of tax cuts but how

conservatives sometimes want to use tax cuts to solve everything. >> right. well, i think the republican party's economic message for 30-plus years has been so focused on the idea that taxes drag down the economy and in order to create jobs and prosperity, we need to cut tax rates. they've been overly focused on that and on the left, talking about taxes like they don't affect the economy at all and you can collect any taxes you feel like and people will work because they love to or don't feel they need to anyway. >> right. >> i think what you need is a balanced idea. i think where we are right now where you have top federal tax rates around 40%, i think that's certainly conducive to a healthy and strong growing economy. that's what we had in the 1990s. with the obituaries of margaret thatcher this week, we've seen condemnation of her from the left. 83% was the tax rate when she came in. it was way too high. we had a good policy shift bringing the rates down into

this range, around 40 or 50 or 35, wherever they are. i think that's appropriate. but i think we need to not lose sight of the fact that taxes affect incentives. when you tax more of something, you get less of it. >> part of what you're talking about is etiology. when you bring up thatcher, we're talking about incentivizing or disincentivizing work or entrepreneurship. i was trying to make a claim that part of what goes through our angst of taxes is we feel we don't know where they go or misinformation about it. dean, where do americans think their tax dollars go? >> i'm amazed people think half the money is going to welfare and the other half to foreign aid. >> nothing like half. >> that's right. you mean, the main welfare program, if you want to use that term, tan nif is half of one percent. you're hard-pressed to get over 5%. if i thought 30 or 40% was going to these programs, you don't

have much to show for them. it is unfortunate. i blame media here to a great extent. because you get ritual is particular reporting. you can talking about 60 billion in taxes. how many in the audience does that mean anything to. if you said x percent of the budget, he wants to raise taxes by half of one percent. i'm not sure it's the right number. say it's half of 1%. most of your audience knows what that means. >> right. so the raw number itself isn't meaningful. i wanted to show there's a terrific book called the submerged state in which the author asks people, do you benefit from government resources, the vast majority say no, i do not. i do not benefit from government programs. upward of 60%, in fact get a mortgage interest deduction or take the lifetime tax credit or student loans or social security or they have pell granlts or the g.i. bill or maybe their kids go

to headstart. all of those, my friends, are government programs. >> i got to pull the politicians into this. you know that what they do is they take taxes as a point to get people personally involved and feel personally tied to issues. big bird and pbs or the national endowment for the arts saying look where your tax dollars are going. it's not dollars. it's a penny. utilizing taxes to get people to feel enraged about something because they're paying for something. there's so much talk about welfare states. they're saying no, no, no, i don't pay for this. i don't take of anything taxwise because all of the attention is paid to politicians saying these people are using your money in the wrong way. you disagree. >> one of the first things i do in all of my economics classes is to show where the federal budget is divided and how it's divided. as dean was saying, the first thing they go to if you ask them, where is your money going, where is the federal budget going? if we just look at foreign aid

and welfare, if we cut those, the budget deficit is closed and then i show them that chart you just showed and they're completely shocked. >> it feels like that isn't irrelevant. when we talk about tax policy, we're talking about politics. on the one hand, there's a question of if people had a different feeling about paying their taxes, it actually impacts the policy makers who after all have to run for reelection. is this why we wend up with this impulse towards you never raise taxes in an election year? >> that's why it's really, really hard to get rid of certain things like deductions and credits. you saw that home interest mortgage deduction. it may be fair to get rid of but i can tell you realtors and bankers and construction. it affects so many people if that's taken away. any time you change something taxwise, you'll have a group of people, a lot with a lot of money, want that not to happen. >> the mortgage -- >> deceptions though. i don't know anyone that would say get rid of it out right. they might want to make it a

credit. the vast majority of people would come out ahead. i'm going to cap it at 400 so it's 15% across the board. most people come out ahead. the industry groups say they're going to take away your mortgage interest deduction, a lot of people think they're going to lose something. >> why don't we label it different. call it section 8 for the wealthy which really what it is. it's a government housing voucher for middle income families which we made a decision about doing because we wanted people to invest in housing. if we called it that, we might have a different perspective. >> very important. >> stay right there. i want to talk about the moral judgments about human behavior through the tax code and specifically about whether or not we ought to smoke our way towards preschool when we come back. [ male announcer] surprise -- you're having triplets. [ babies crying ] surprise -- your house was built on an ancient burial ground.

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to help workers earn the skills they need to fill those jobs, we'll work with states to make high quality preschool available to every child in america. we're going to pay for it by raising taxes on tobacco products that harm our young people. it's the right thing to do. >> that was the president on wednesday rolling out his budget plan. one of the novel items in the plan is the near doubling of the federal cigarette tax to $1.95 per pack. it should raise $8 million over the next decade, used to pay for early childhood education. just as the budget is called a moral document, so too is our tax code. there are two what i felt were ethical claims that the president was making. one is we're going to take smoking, which is bad, and pay for early childhood education,

which is good. >> right. >> and we're going to institute the buffett rule which he presents as an ethical claim on the fair share. >> i think they're problematic ways to finance the government. on cigarette taxes, it's the most regressive major tax that the governments levy. it is effective in reducing smoking rates. fewer people to smoke. it causes people to smoke less. a problem that creates is it's a declining source of revenue as the cigarette tax works and gets people to quit smoking, the revenues taper off. we're going to have the cigarette tax to pay for this program. over time, the revenues become insufficient to pay for the program. i also think if something like universal pre-k is of a lot of value, you ought to make a case for the public to finance it with a broad based tax. the president comes in and says we're going to have a major expansion of the federal government and create a universal health care entitlement, but somebody else will pay for it. with the exception fts cigarette

tax, they should be responsible for paying any of the bill for expansions of government. i think that's a problematic message if the government is doing good things for the public as a whole, they should pay for it. >> it's the world war ii notion. even if you weren't on the frontlines, being part of the war effort at home meant recycling, conservation, we would all be part of it. what we know as a matter of politics, it hasn't been easy to make those claims. even when people don't want to see an increase in taxes. >> tying it to morality. who is going to say no to raising taxes on cigarettes instead of addressing the problem. we need something very, very different for this. instead of smoking, it could be toking. let's tax marijuana. >> legalize marijuana and tax it. >> that's -- declining situation. >> get some more items in there to tax. >> i think cigarette smoking seems to be morally somehow

worse than something like that. to tie it to that, means it will go through on both sides. >> on this point about people not being willing to pay taxes for things. it's interesting, national academy for social insurance did polling a month or two back where they asked people, would they be willing to pay higher payroll taxes for social security. overwhelmingly, people said yes. across the local spectrum. it was striking. i've raised this point, looked at their poland talked with them. it was a very serious poll. i've raised this conversation and people literally ignore it. i was on a radio show last week request with several other people. what are we going to do about social security. somewhere down the road we need to do something. raise the cap and higher payroll tax. the other people on the show said we can't keep evading the problem. it's like i hadn't said anything. >> this is an interesting one. the payroll tax is the one place where you are sort of -- you know what that tic-tacs is paying for, right?

your just like property taxes, you're clear about what they're paying for. with the payroll tax, we know what it's paying for, but i feel there's an obscurity around it. i have to say coming from a working class household, i didn't know that high incomes capped out. i didn't know there was a point at which you stopped paying payroll taxes. you know, the first time i ever earned enough, it was in a november, i was 32. i was like, my check is too big. it should be smaller this month. >> you're a rare bird. >> i had no idea that it felt to me like this seemed like the easiest tax base solution. everybody pay all year. >> consistent with that, the social security administration says if we raise the social security tax to 7.65%, we'll close the gap. so we know that the social security trust fund will top out in 2033 and this will close the fund. there's support for that. the backlash is always, well, we've got to reform it now.

we've got to reform it in a certain way. it's going to take a mix of measures at least. >> but it is the one place where we see indication of people's willingness to pay more in taxes. >> right. >> let me also ask about this. the notion that we use taxes to create certain kinds of behaviors or to keep certain kinds of behaviors from happening, is that a reasonable way to use our tax code or should we just go to the most simple, with this income at 10%, this income with 30%, is it reasonable to use our tax code as a moral document? >> i any it can be reasonable to do that. but we do too much of that and in the wrong ways. sfiems it's the really efficient way to achieve social changes. carbon tax is i clean and elegant way to reduce carbon emissions that's more economically efficient than doing regulatory approaches when you tell people to emit carbon at specific times and where. i think there's a tendency for the tax code to get politically

captured. you get the mortgage interest deduction that aren't really producing greater social efficiency. they're producing benefits for certain incumbent that value the fact that their tax bill is held down. >> that's an incredible waste. i'd give my favorite. the cafeteria plans that are a small place, people wanted it. we have that in there. the amount of money you save by putting aside $1500, $2,000 a year, the amount of money you save on taxes is so small compared to the administrative expenses. they're sitting there with $700 saying what am i going to do. people buy glasses. get a prescription. >> what a waste. i stopped doing that when i was an employee, not a business owner. i would fill out these forms. there was a point where i reached the point and said my time is money. this is not worth my time. it is a really crazy process every year when i talk about the fsa and all of this and here's the paperwork. it sounds just so much. there's a point where this is just too much time spent.

there was a great op-ed today, if you calculate the tax code, how much time we spend on taxes by $20 an hour and it comes out to $180 billion a year that we spend in time, cut that in half, that's $90 billion going through paperwork. >> stay here. when we come back, i want to talk more about the social security thing. that was the other big news out of the white house this week. whether or not we're going to save the safety net with chained cpi when we come back. wait a sec! i found our colors. we've made a decision. great, let's go get you set up... you need brushes... you should check out our workshops... push your color boundaries while staying well within your budget walls. i want to paint something else. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot.

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before you begin an aspirin regimen. it can happen to anyone. talk to your doctor. anbe a name and not a number?tor scottrade. ron: i'm never alone with scottrade. i can always call or stop by my local office. they're nearby and ready to help. so when i have questions, i can talk to someone who knows exactly how i trade. because i don't trade like everybody. i trade like me. that's why i'm with scottrade. announcer: scottrade- proud to be ranked "best overall client experience." the budget plan president obama presented this week makes another push toward a grand bargain with an inclusion of an enticement to republicans that had so far been off the table in the deficit battle. a proposal to take a scalpel to social security. his plan would limit the benefits paid to seniors by

charging the calculation for inflation -- changing the calculation for inflation to cut the growth of monthly social security payments in the future. so instead of tying the increases to the consumer price index, the president's budget would change it to a different calculation called chained cpi. while his budget exempts the oldest and the poorest of social security recipients, it would cause 65-year-old rye tier ees to lose more than a thousand dollars a year by the time they reach 85. which far more will reach. house republicans for their part, refused to take the bait. the plan has sparked resistance from within the president's own party as progressives lauchb an organized campaign against the proposal. so i mean, i know second term presidents are supposed do, touch the third rail that nobody else can. they'll never run for election again. this has been tough. >> why are we picking on old people? why are we nickel-and-diming the seniors who can't afford it?

prescription coverage that's not covered by the government. in retirement, more than a third of your costs are going to be related to health care. $200,000 on average for seniors. in their senior lifetime. it's crazy. >> with baby boomers being where they are in their life cycle, if everybody is going to stop smoking, even more old people. we know this is a huge population and i think part of the conversation has been, what are we going to do with all of these retirees, this is one answer. >> it is outrageous. the presumption is that somehow seniors have too much money. josh wrote a piece on this a while back. our retirement system collapsed. we don't have the benefits, most people have little by way of savings. a lot of people took a big hit on their homes with the collapse of the housing bubble. social security has been the one pillar that stood up. we should look to expand it. this is just the "washington post" loves this. but apart from the washington punditry -- >> why include it?

>> as an economist, this is attractive because of substitution bias. when you start buying close substitutes, prices change, you want to make sure that the increases are consistent with actual inflation and actual inflationary pressure. in a sense, it's attractive. at the same time, i agree with you. seniors need to keep spending. this is not a robust recovery. any time we're taking money away from people who spend money. and that's what they do. their incomes aren't growing generally. they will -- the economy will suffer. i think we want to be careful about how we're undermining spending that could take place -- >> we're talking about the seniors and more of an argument about the ways in which they're spending on everything from prescription -- >> thinking the same way we all are. that's the thing. they have much less room to make adjustments like we do. the whole don't buy the beef, buy the chicken. so much more of their budget are on items they need to live, such as prescriptions or aid or

health care, all of them. >> i think this is an issue where there's a real elite mass disconnect. people who are relatively wealthy think of social security as being something that's a safety net fallback. a small part of your retirement. in fact, when you look at the assets of a typical near retirement, middle income household, about half of their assets are accrued social security benefits. it swamps everything else as dean noted pensions have gone away. people don't put much money in their 401(k)'s and invest badly when they do. people talk about social security as being this really broken system with lots of problems. it does have a medium term deficit that needs to be fixed. but it's healthier than the other two main pillars of our retirement system. >> given that the -- the economic recovery, but even if we look at the evaporation of wealth that occurred for people who basically ended up people having to eat their retirement accounts and take short term bad tax decisions to plug those holes. if you were 50 when this all

started happening, you can't make that back up. >> we've done analysis of that. we've come to pretty much the same conclusion. 55 to 64, near retirees, median wealth, including the equity in your home is about $170,000. i'd like to compare that to roughly the median house price. they can take every penny they have, sell their car, 401(k), every penny, they pay off their mortgage. that means all they have is retirement and social security. if you take the group down, 45 to 54, they're at about $70,000. maybe 150 ten years out. but we're not looking at people. these are at the middle. half the people are below that. people are not having wealthy retirements. >> social security is not the supplemental, not the extra. when we make a chain cpi, in case folks aren't catching this. exactly how does that change? it's a basket of things you would buy. imagine that you need to put a basket of goods together.

how is the chained cpi different than that? >> what it does is takes account of the fact that as prices change, people buy more of some things and less of other things. if beef rises in price relative to chicken, cpi will adjust upward on average, chicken went up by x and beef by y. it adjusts for the fact that they'll buy less beef and more chicken. >> this is the auburn institution. >> it's important to note that seniors have different consumption and seniors actually see a higher rate of inflation. that's an experimental index. everyone is a proponent of the chained cpi. have the bureau of labor statistics construct a -- they all runaway from me. >> i love that. what you've said is what if we collected some data and answer these empirical questions? everyone said no, absolutely not. thank you to dean and josh and also to carmen and lisa. but they are going to stick around a bit longer because when we come back, before you pay your taxes, you have to earn your pay.

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for many americans, tax time is when you get a full sense of just exactly what you have earned during the year. that familiar 1040 form lays it all out in black and white. or should i say in pink and blue? because tax time is also a reminder of the wide gap that still exists in the wages paid to men and women. 50. that is the number of years that have passed since the enactment of the equal pay act by president john f. kennedy in april of 1963. 15.1 million, that's the number of households headed by women in the united states that would benefit from equal pay. 31% is how many of those households have income levels that fall below the poverty line.

77 is how many cents women working full-time currently make for every dollar men are paid. $11,084 is the yearly wage gap created by that pay deficit between full-time working men and women. 73 cents is how much women in seattle, washington, make for every dollar that men are paid. giving that city the distinction of the largest wage gap of a metropolitan area in the country. 64 cents is how much african-american women are paid for every dollar men earn, showing that women of color are more impacted by these unequal pay disparities and 55 cents is how much latino women are paid for every dollar paid to nonhispanic white men. 45 is the number of years it would take for women's pay to catch up to men if current rates don't change. 89 is the number of additional more weeks of food that women could afford if the wage gap were eliminated.

7 is how much more months of mortgage and utility payments women could afford with the elimination of the wage gap and one is the number of bills called the paycheck fairness act currently awaiting congressional approval that would amend the 1938 fair labor standards act and prohibit employers from paying men more than women for the same job. the act would prohibit those employers from penalizing women who speak up about pay disparities. if women are expected to contribute key kwally with the taxes taken out of their checks, it's beyond time they have equal pay. up next, the thing allowing women small business owners to gain equal footing. vanced degren education from capella university, you'll be better equipped to deal with today's issues and make an even greater impact. let's get started at capella.edu.

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that part's true. bob will retire when he's 153, which would be fine if bob were a vampire. but he's not. ♪ he's an architect with two kids and a mortgage. luckily, he found someone who gave him a fresh perspective on his portfolio. and with some planning and effort, hopefully bob can retire at a more appropriate age. it's not rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade. the lack of women ceos at fortune 500 companies is well-documented. record number of 20 women were heads of company like kraft, yahoo and others. we missed a growing number of women-owned small businesses

that are being created and need support. kind of farther down the line. the most recent census data shows 7.8 million women-owned firms in '97. between 1997 and 2007, companies owned by women grew at double the rate of their male counterparts. yet, despite those gains, the numbers could be better. women owned firms employ just 6% of the nation's workforce. they account for 4% of private sector business revenues and only 2% of women-owned firms are considered high achieving. in other words, earning 1 million or more in revenues. small businesses are responsible for the creation of 65% of new jobs. by supporting women entrepreneurs, we would in turn be supporting our economy. personal finance expert and litz a cook and also joining me are amy palmer, founder of her own

small business and tycoonist entertainment and dore i clark, author of reinventing you. define your brand, imagine your future. thank you, ladies, for all being here. i want to start, carmen, you and i have talked a bit about this at various points. were there particular challenges facing women when it comes to beginning a small business? >> oh, many, many, taking care of the kids. that's the reason why they have their own business. you need flexible hours, they're not the big earners,s 2%. most of them working from home, supporting their families, because they need that. we've got the web, access to people all around the world. access to capital. that's just the phrase that just means no one is going to lend to me. so we have a lot of women and i met many, many of them who have fantastic small businesses, they just need, whether it's $10,000, a thousand, $10,000 and some

even $100,000 to get to the next level. all the talk this talk is about having access to capital and getting to a point where you're scaleable. meaning you can get -- women encounter so much trouble getting the money and getting people to believe and invest in them. that's a huge burden. >> this is part of your personal story. we were looking at women business owners and we're looking at how they started or acquired their businesses. more than 55% of them are starting with either personal or family savings, 6% coming from personal or family assets other than savings, about 11% from a business or personal credit card. and under 1% either getting business loans from the federal or state governments or from the banks. in other words, women are absolutely boot strapping these businesses on their own. >> they're boot strapping their businesses and for me, i sell funded power women tv for four years. i took my primary job and i said, i believe so much in this mission and this network that i was living way below what i

should be living at my age because i believed in it. my passion, determination and the integrity for my bland is what attracted an a investor to me. it took me four years to find that investor. >> do you think that is in part based on gender dore i. is part of what's going on is that banks are seeing women and particularly young women who will go offnd have kids as bad investments? >> i think that's part of it, melissa. another key issue is that the venture capital industry is traditionally extremely male. if you look at the high watermark of the vc industry from '95 to '99. during that period, only 6% of the funds -- of the firms funded by venture capitalists had women management on their teams. the one optimistic trend is the rise in angel investing, that is investing done at a lower level. smaller amounts of money than venture capital. more women are involved as investors and more women are getting funded.

>> right. but this isn't -- the other thing i think lisa, that was surprising to me just looking and .5% from government guarantee loans and from federal state and local governments. should we have a different perspective on loan making, government loan making? >> she should and shouldn't. the data that you showed are true for all businesses. all new businesses. that's true. the point where women differ is in the last statistic that you just raised. the problem for start-ups is that women typically have lower credit scores. so this is what we have to address. why do they have -- >> right. >> so often they don't have credit histories. they don't have credit histories like men do. and we're still trying to figure out why. economists are still trying to figure out why. sometimes it's that women are more reliant on their parents and college for example or they don't have jobs as early. they don't have the credit

histories. we're also trying to change that. some experiments that are happening with including different kinds of bills, for example in one's credit scores, like utility bills and not just credit cards. >> responsible bill payer but you weren't carrying a visa card. >> that's right. had that's one thing. another thing is that i think women are less informed about, say, small business loans and sba policy and so on. how do you find out this information? you find this information out through networks. through country club memberships, through basketball games that are all men. so i think that this is one of the informal ways, that -- >> that's a big part. this last part here is about who you know. you mentioned vcs and angels. that's very much who do you know. who is going to connect you with un. for example, i will do it for friends and there are female focused angel funds who understand that women-owned businesses, investing in them is

a great bargain. they're priced differently than the men because all the money is flowing in this direction. they're going to get dedication, women that are really dedicated to what they want to do and get i better return. possibly less of a risk. >> is there a risk aversion or -- willingness to take risk different among women? obviously not all women are the same. but do you see a different kind of risk aversion related to this credit history? >> i do. i think that women have so many wonderful ideas. i get e-mails from all over the world. they say i want to be you, i want to do what you're doing. how did you do it? there is no set formula. but i will tell you, it's so important to have the right team around you. i don't mean a business adviser and investor. your partner, your friends, your family, they need to support you. carmen and i have many friends in common who are amazing female entrepreneurs and the common factor is that they've always

been told that's a bad idea. i don't think you can do that. we always say we're not listening to anybody. we're doing it. we're making it happen. at this level where i'm at, i have an investor and i'm almost launching this network, i still hear it. i have to say that my main supporters have been men. >> yes. >> we're going to ask a little bit about, once you make that decision, once you get over the risk aversion and you're in it, do you brand yourself as a woman doing it or a gender neutral. i want to talk about my favorite personal small woman business owner. i love what she has done when we come back. [ male announcer ] what?! investors could lose tens of thousands of dollars in hidden fees on their 401(k)s?! go to e-trade and roll over your old 401(k)s to a new e-trade retirement account. none of them charge annual fees and all of them offer low cost investments. e-trade. less for us. more for you.

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my favorite woman small business owner is a person i've never met but i see her work all the time. simone bruney is new orleans demolition diva.

she lost both her home and job in the aftermath of hurricane katrina. even though she did not have formal construction experience, she saw a need in her community that could offer a niche for her business and from that was born the demo diva. simone brings a distinctly dem anyone flair to a male dominated arena. all her dumpsters are pink. it's an example of how women entrepreneurs can change the field. i wanted to ask you about demo diva. the only reason i know she exists is because she uses this pink branding. i saw t i thought that's interesting. i looked it up, learned more about it. should women be branding themselves as girls doing work, women doing the work or should we be trying to be as gender neutral as possible and be good as what i do? >> i think, melissa, we're exiting an era where what mattered how we were the same as people, did you go to the same schools, the same clubs. i think we're entering an era

where what really matters is what's unique about you, what's different. i don't think that necessarily the women have to brand themselves as i'm a woman doing this, but you need to ask yourself the question, what about me uniquely as an individual can i bring? maybe if you're in a male-dominated industry like demolition, maybe it is a big difference that you're a woman. obviously, the pink things are just a phenomenal branding, great visual cue. for anyone the question really is what do i bring to the table that no one else can. >> it was interesting when you were talking about men as mentors. it has been true for me as well. many of the people who cheered me on were men. i'm thinking on the other end, for selling the product or trying to bring in clients, are you targeting women as your clients or are you targeting that broader group? >> for power women, it's all women. but the interesting thing is i had a business adviser who went to columbia business school and we worked on my business plan together. as we created it, he said

there's too much pink in this. don't use the color pink because vcs will be turned off by it. i had to put some grays and black and make it a little more formal. when you go to power women tv, it's pink and gray. power women tv. make no mistake about it. it is interesting. there is a balance. you don't want everything to be pink and girlie. my feedback has been they're not going to take you as serious. >> not all women are attracted to that. >> not all women are pinkie. >> i do feel like -- because i'm in financial services in that world where there's not many of us. it's more so not just conscious branding, i'm a chick, i'm a brown chick, check it out. if you get me, if you're simpatico, i don't care what gender or color, you can be with me. i don't consciously do that. however, i did avoid pinks, i avoid being too girlie, the problem is you need to be taken

seriously by the people in your field. there's a delicate balance where she did it great. demo diva. that's in your face. i chose to kind of not completely go in that direction. >> you don't want to hide it either. >> there is space there. by putting myself out there, i'm saying hi, i'm a lady. >> there's a lot of variation by industry. i would completely agree with you. when i was at harvard, one of the things i was doing was consulting and advising governments. i had just a spectrum of colors from dark gray to light gray. so no chloroowe when i showed up, you knew who i was. there's no ambiguity about what's going on. we know from names research that people are associative to names. i do research on black names and women names. what we find is that women experience this kind of discrimination, african-americans do, so there has to be or there is a perception gap. there has to be a way to address

that perception gap. >> that names research is fascinating because it doesn't require bodies. it's not that like a person comes and is like -- it's just if you're sending resumes with one kind of name or another and seeing who gets callbacks. this is part of your point about why people end up starting their own businesses is in part because of the kind of labor market discrimination people experience and now i'm going to work for myself. >> how many times have i hit the ceiling sometimes and the glass ceiling and many other ceilings. at a point you get frustrated and say i'm going to do this on my own. the first year i doubled my income. if it gets to a point where women have so much trouble getting ahead because you be quiet, you can be an assistant. that's where you belong. they find a way around t it's a risky thing to do. >> it is. >> we're risk averse. the research shows that we're risk averse. that's a good thing and a bad thing. we don't change our investment portfolios. >> a generation of women who are -- they're savvy. >> they're going to have no

choice. it's not a very safe economic environment. they're going to have to be. thank you to carmen and amy and dorie. lisa will hang out a little longer. coming up, jay-z and bee johns. we'll talk about their trip to cuba. we'll take a look at venus and serene a williams. we're going to be joined with another guest. more at the top of the hour. aaah! aaaaah! theres a guy on the window! do something, dad! aaaah! aaaah! what is happening? their bad driving makes car insurance more expensive for the rest of us. good thing there's snapshot from progressive. snap it in and get a discount based on your good driving. stop paying for rate suckers. try snapshot free at progressive.com.

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get your first prescription free when you lost the thing you can't believe you lost.. when what you just bought, just broke. or when you have a little trouble a long way from home... as an american express cardmember you can expect some help. but what you might not expect, is you can get all this with a prepaid card. spends like cash. feels like membership. . welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. two republicans in congress came up with a novel approach to the question of what anniversary gift to get for the couple who already has everything. last week jay-z and beyonce celebrated their fifth year as mr. and mrs. with a four-day trip to havana. they found something waiting for

them that they can't count among -- a florida representatives, i willian a ross rate then and -- sent a letter to the department. to express concern and to request information regarding the highly publicized trip by u.s. musician, beyonce noels carter and sean carter to cuba. as you know, u.s. law expressly pro tickets the licensing or tourist activities in cuba. as it turns out, the representatives concern was misplaced because b and j's trip was licensed under a 2011 obama administration policy that loosened restrictions on travel to cuba. the policy allows licenses, "under the auspices of an organization that sponsors and organizes people to people programs." the license permitting the carter's trip was issued to the nonprofit group academic arrangements abroad. for most americans, cuba remains

off limits. the only country that the united states restricts citizens from visiting. president obama's travel allowance is the latest update to the u.s.'s 50-year-old policy of economic and diplomatic isolation against cuba. the u.s. embargo was put into place in 1962 by president kennedy after $1.8 billion worth of u.s. property was confiscated by the cuban government under fidel castro. it has been the inheritance of every u.s. president ever since. each administration hoping that the economic choke-hold of sanctions would force the communist island nation to submit to democracy and free market capitalism and end the castro regime. but five decades later, cuba remains a communist nation with a castro in charge. it was old age, not illness ultimately -- not u.s. policy that forced fidel castro to abdicate it to his brother raul.

even some of those critics question the effectiveness of u.s. policy and the u.s. chamber of commerce has urged president obama to drop the embargo citing $1.2 billion burden it poses on the u.s. economy. the cuban government uses the embargo as a perennial scapegoat blaming it for shortages on food and medicine. after half a century of passing the buck on failed policy, is it finally time that the buck stops right here with the carters? joining me now, la san droe perez, a cuban american and professor and chair of the department of latin american studies at john j college. fernandez, associate professor of sociology at queens college and the graduate center at cuny and the author of cuba, represent. lisa cook who has been here for days now. i love her, she hangs out with us. she's a professor at michigan state university and from

washington, d.c., the director of the u.s. cuba democracy pact. ma ris yoe, i want to start with you. let me just ask, is it time to lift the sanctions? >> no, absolutely not. to the contrary. what you see right now in cube is essentially a socially and economic bankrupt regime led by a handful of octo jenn-airians. you have political dissidents throughout the world, whether the daughter of murdered pro-democracy leader who will be returning to cuba, the hefd the ladies in white, the largest pro-democracy movement in cuba which are women which at this time as we're speaking are marching through different cities on the island. these are the wives, daughters, sisters relatives of other prisoners who dressed in white asking for freedom and democracy for all ternatialternative. to hand over billions and billions of dollars of tourist and trade dollars to a monopoly,

remember the cuban government that castro regime holds a monopoly over every industry in that country. it is a totalitarian economy. it would be a huge betrayal to the courageous pro-democracy activists fighting as we speak right now on the streets of cuba. >> so he's framed this for us almost like the spring of the middle east, of the arab spring that there is a pro-democracy effort and it's our responsibility as a country to maintain the sanctions and the embargo to support that effort. >> you know, melissa, what's interesting is that most of those dissidents and the internal opposition have called in fact for ending the embargo. the isolation of cuba actually hinders their work because they're shut off from the rest of the world. so it'sth case that i think the embargo among the many reasons why it should be lifted is because a lot of people argue that in fact it would help those people.

sanchez, who has toured the united states, a well-known blogger in cuba and abroad, someone who called for the end of the embargo. it's a vestige of the cold war >> it seems like we've heard is an economic and political argument, right? certainly it is a moral and ethical one. but on the politics and the economics, the question of whether or not the embargo itself does the work of moving the island towards democracy. >> i don't think -- in fact, i think that it does a reverse. under the bush administration especially the aim of the embargo and bush administration, policies towards cuba was regime change. really all it did was make cubans feel bitter to the united states, saying why are they doing this to us? depriving us of resources and food and medicine are two areas where it's particularly difficult for cubans because of the embargo, both of these are very scarce. it's a humanitarian issue. >> let me ask you that.

if i think about other totalitarian regimes, like china for example and i know it's a bit silly, but because the jay-z, beyonce moment is part of what's put this back on the table for americans, jay-z has this lyric in which he's suggesting, well, why are you mad about me being in a communist -- on a communist island when the microphone i'm rapping from is communist. it opens up this question. how is cuba different than china? why should we behave differently towards that nation? >> i wobbling to wager with you and anybody else that cuba will become a democracy before china does. we've seen that sanctions have a certain effect. china today is the most lucrative dictatorship in human history in part thanks because all we care about is business and forget about the thousands of people tortured and imprisoned in china. when is the last time we had a

show for crusading chinese democracy. we don't care about them other than how much money is being made. in cuba, you have a new generation of leadership. it's laughable to any cuban to think that the castro regime is going to continue or any vestige of it. if i may mention something that lis andromentioned, they support sanctions. she's on the record as saying so is she does not believe that sanctions should be lifted n conditionally. the majority of the pro dempsey movement, whether the leader of the ladies in white and others have said that we need to maintain those conditions in u.s. law. let's remember what the conditions are. the unconditional release of all political prisoners, the recognition of fundamental human rights as recognized in any country of the world or should be, and three, the legalization of independent labor unions and independent political parties and the independent media. we're not asking for the world here. also the difference with china is that here we are in the western hemisphere.

34 out of 35 countries in in hemisphere have signed on to the interamerican democratic charter and accept representative democracy. even the chavez government does so in venezuela. this is an anomaly of what should be a fully democratic hemisphere. in our interest here, the last thing we want to return to in in western hemisphere are dictatorships of the left or the right. >> let me get your response to some of that, sophia. that's a pretty comprehensive claim he's making. >> it fails to recognize the sovereignty of the cubans and the cuban nation to make their own decisions about how they want to run their country. the united states doesn't have the right to tell any other country how it should operate. cubans in cuba should have the right to determine who they want to run their government and houp they want their democracy or whatever we want to claim should operate. i don't think any of us has the right to throw stones at what's going on in cuba because we have

enough problems in the united states. we talk about political dissidents and human rights violators. the united states soldiers in guantanamo. >> hold that. i promise we're coming to guantanamo bay. we're not having this conversation without getting there. when we come back, i want to ask you lisa, whether or not exporting between the u.s. and cuba is good for cuba. they might want to keep us away. when we come back. the american dream is of a better future, a confident retirement. those dreams have taken a beating lately. but no way we're going to let them die. ♪ ameriprise advisors can help keep your dreams alive like they helped millions of others. by listening. planning. working one on one. that's what ameriprise financial does. and that's what they can do with you. that's how ameriprise puts more within reach.

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while the u.s. embargo of cuba has taken a heavy economic toll. the sanctions have shielded cuba

from the consequences of free market liberalism that has had disastrous results in other latin american nations even with limited resources, cuba matched must wealthier nations including the u.s. in areas like health, education, employment and literacy. i want to turn to you on this. i know you spent a lot of time researching and studying in cuba. >> right one of the things that the embargo has done, it has limited u.s. consumer culture, it has limited u.s. tourism to cuba. imagine an entire island with no mcdonald's. >> that sounds great. that actually sounds like a positive -- i'm constantly stunned by how much economic there is because of multinational corporations. you travel anywhere in the world, there's a gap, a mcdonald's, a kfc. you realize how much we'vee ported these. >> exactly.

>> it may difficult to find clothes because of there is no gap or there is no old navy. but at the same time, it has also produced a very vibrant cultural scene and musical culture within cuba. one of the things i've looked at has been rap music. by has thrived on the island despite the embargo. but at the same time, because they didn't have access to digital technology, like samplers and mixers, because they weren't on the tour circuit for american rap acts. because they just didn't have mtv, they really innovated and created very interesting forms ever rich culture that draw on traditional cuban instrumentation. that use the human beat box to mimic samples where they didn't have samplers. came up with a unique culture. for me, i think that kind of culture would be lost if things completely opened up and american culture came in. >> lisa, part of that culture is financial. there is a big economic cost to

americans and to the u.s. economy for not -- for having this embargo. in fact, estimated $1.2 billion in annual costs to us, to the united states. >> right. you know, the march of capitalism is very difficult to resist, especially among agricultural producers in the u.s. so some states like alabama depend on cuba for one fourth of its exports. that's catfish, soybeans, corn, wheat. it's a number of different products. there is a march to do more. in 2001, this was $4 million. in 2012, it was $400 million. not only do we have more exports that we want to send to them, there are imports weigh want from them. we want cigars. >> we do want cigars. yes, that is accurate. >> we want citrus fruits. cobalt. it has the second largest reserves of nickel. so i mean, it's a really vibrant

economy that we can benefit from. in 1957, cuba was our largest or the u.s. was its largest partner with respect to exports and with respect to imports. so if we have this push to get exports out the door to create a gdp that's vibrant based on exports, this is a place that's ready to receive ours. >> lis andro. >> i'd like to get away from the cultural -- the embargo is a failed policy and it has in many ways an ethical and moral dimension to it that is in the absence of any national security really interest in isolating cuba. the reason the embargo persists to this day is because a recalcitrant, backward thinking group of cuban exiles primarily have kept this from happening. because there's no incentive in in country to change u.s./cuba policy. you have influential people in congress even who want to keep this on. incompetent think what's interesting about the position

that mauricio espoused is that the people who want to keep the embargo want change in cuba. yet, they want to keep a policy in effect for 50 years that obviously hasn't brought about any change in cuba. you would think that you want a new approach since one hasn't worked for about 50 years. >> mauricio, that's a reasonable claim. if you have 50 years worth of a policy and that policy hasn't brought the change needed. why persist with the policy? >> i'd like to come back to the same point that i made before. the alternative hasn't worked either in let's say, china, vietnam, in business engagement in those countries, those continue to be brutal dictatorships. in burma, sanctions are working south africa, sanctions work. i'll make that bet that cube will become a democratic nation before china and vietnam. at that point, we can say which -- >> i just want to ask one quick question. i promise i'm going to let you

finish. so you used the south african example which is extremely compelling for the use of sanctions to change regime that was appalling. but for example, it included travel ban, right? at any point americans still had the freedom to move around the globe, which is part of how we understand our americanness, our ability with that passport. i could at any point still go to johannesburg or cape town in the context of it. i really am interested. help mean to understand why a travel ban, an embargo of this level is different than a sanction. >> tourism is the crux of u.s. sanctions towards cuba. it's the number one industry of the cuban government like oil is of iran. let's target oil in the case of iran. tourism is not a big industry in north korea. tourism is not a big industry in iran. at the end of the day, what will you target or focus on? the tourism industry. because the tourism industry in cuba is owned and operated by the military through a

conglomera conglomerate, raul castro's son-in-law. we should not be giving tens of billions of dollars to the castro families that owns the nightclubs, restaurants and maintained an apartheid system in which the areas where tourists were able to go to that cubans were. for the most part, the 2 million canadian tourists go to all inclusive resorts on the keys which are sessentially out of access for the cuban people. unless we believe in an extraordinary example of trickle down economics. we're on msnbc and we're leaning forward here. i disagree that there will be an extreme forward trickle down economics in cuba. >> i love that you were like and clearly no one on this network believes that. hold on and wait for me. we're going to come back after the commercial. i want to talk about that all inclusive resort that nobody wants to go to, which is guantanamo bay. that's what we come back. i have low testosterone. there, i said it.

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right this minute, egregious human rights violations are taking place in cuba. prisoners held indefinitely for years with no formal charges and no trial in sight. people who say they've been subjected to torture and abuse. mental and physical duress that could ultimately lead to their death all under the watch not of the cuban government but of our own. at the u.s. detention camp of guantanamo bay. you started to bring us on exactly this topic. there are 70 people currently living in cuba who are refugees, political refugees from the u.s. there are -- who are finding asylum and safe space in cuba. there is an american presence which has a circumstance where prisoners at guantanamo are in a hunger strike because of the sources. it does make it tough to have like a single kind of ethical or

moral stance for this country vis-a-vis that country. >> i couldn't agree with you more. people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. the most egregious reports of torture of people being held in custody came out of guantanamo bay and later in abu ghraib. all of which were the doing of the united states government. even the united states challenged whether or not the people who were being tortured in guantanamo bay should have the right to legal representation. in fact, lawsuits had to be filed in order to just allow these people to have lawyers to represent them. that's not something that we find being operated by the cuban government. so the united states really needs to take a hard look in the mirror about what it's doing. i wanted to go back for a moment to the point that mauricio made about south africa. one of the huge differences in the argument that he's making and what's happening in cuba, in south africa, the people rose up with arms to fight back against the government. that's not what's happening in cuba. we have to recognize the cubans

have to be physically fit and trained militarily to resist an invasion from the united states unfortunately. if they wanted to engage in a military up rising against their government, they're better equipped to do so than perhaps any other nation on this planet. >> in other words, you're suggesting that if there were a kind of arab spring uprising, that might be a compelling reason for the u.s. to take a kind of position as it did in south africa, but that that's not what we're seeing at this moment? >> precisely. one of the reasons that we know that -- if we look back at the platte amendment in 1902, the united states agreed to turnover sovereignty much the cuban nation to the cuban people only if the u.s. could continue to have influence and control over how it ran its government. so the revolution in 1959 is not what triggered the united states feeling that it ought to control what's going on in cuba. the united states has always wanted to take control of this

island nation from far before fidel castro and his brother raul. >> let me let lisandro. >> we could spend the entire day discussing this. ultimately this is a u.s. policy and should be formulated in the best interests of the united states. my argument on that is that regardless of its impact on cuba and i think it will be positive on cuba, ultimately there's no reason why the most powerful nation in world needs to treat cuba has a threat and keep its citizens from traveling there. it's increasingly become isolated. we talked about the sanctions about south africa. the analogy breaks down because in a sense almost the entire world were behind those sanctions in south africa. the vote that was taken in november, last november at the u.n., every year there's a u.n. resolution condemning the u.s. fort embargo on cuba. the vote was 182 this last time to 2. only the u.s. and israel voting

against a resolution to condemn the u.s. embargo. even the marshall islands abandoned the u.s. on the u.n. >> there's a different way of framing it than i had been doing previously. this isn't about what's good for cuba, this is a question about what is reasonable u.s. policy. no national security threat and it's 90 miles off the coast. there's a $1.2 billion potential economic capacity and even if there are the kinds of human rights violations that people wouldn't suggest there aren't, we have relationships with others -- from a perspective, taking the cuban welfare question out, is there a good reason to continue the embargo? >> as the sole dissenting voice on this panel, i have soc much much i want to say. the only standard for cuba is that of the other 34 countries in the western hemisphere. it's called the interamerican democratic charter.

it's important to clarify. the people you reference thad are refugees in cuba are people that are wanted by the fbi. including the murderers of american police officers and law enforcement officials. i wouldn't take that so lightly. in the comparison with guantanamo bay, if i may, the one difference between the prison on the cuban side and the u.s. side is the fact that the international committee on the red cross and the u.n.'s special on torture is allowed to go into the prison on the u.s. side and meanwhile, since 1961. the castro regime prohibited the international committee on the red cross and on torture to enter into any cuban prison to inspect the situations there. it's logical to say that cubans can somehow rise in arms against the regime when the cuban state security will find if you have a thumb drive or a copy of the human rights anywhere in cuba, they will come to your house and put you in prison for a thumb drive or a deck layers of human

rights. that happens all the time. it's tough to say, if you have arms. no one has arms in cuba. it's a totalitarian state. finally, one of the colleagues mentioned, it's important with the jay-z situation, in regards to hip hop, there are artist this is cuba that are currently in prison because of their lyrics critical to the regime. one of them, another one who has lima cruz who is has been in prison since december of 2010. simply for listening -- he's an amnesty prisoner of -- simply for listening to critical hip hop. that's a difference. >> it's an important point about sort of this whether or not there is space for these kinds of -- i think part of what we're trying to do here is something that i think we may not have a great ability to do given the nature of the embargo, which is to talk in careful ways about what life is like in cuba itself. but you want to speak to that? >> i agree. there are people who are

criticized. censorship exists. there are a large number of people, large number of rappers and filmmakers, documentary makers, many of them young who don't agree with the movement but are working within the system to launch critiques to think how they could make it better, to think about a post embargo cuba. >> mauricio, thank you so much. i'm so sorry. we're just out of time. it's complicated. mauricio, i want to thank you for joining us. i know it's tough when you're not sitting at the table. >> i appreciate it. >> thank you to all of the voices. lisandro, sophia, and lisa and -- thanks for joining us and trying to think through the complicated questions around cuba. more complications, a complicated challenge of creating opportunity and protecting the environment. there's an activist caught in the middle. she's going to hang out at my table. fight back fast with tums.

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this was the scathing headline recently in "the new york times" accompanied by a photograph of community activist carter. hero of the bronx is now accused of betraying it. the report says that carter, who gained national prominence for her environmental justice efforts, has now been hired by the popular grocery delivery service fresh direct. the problem? many in the bronx where carter grew up and got her start and made her name oppose sighting fresh direct in the neighborhood because it contributes to the truck traffic and pollutants that -- her gig has eddie batista of the new york city environmental justice alliance saying things like "the ironies are just breathtaking. either you're an honest broker and accountable to the community or you're working for a business interest and accountable to that." joining me now is me juror a carter, president of the ma juror a carter group and host of

the show from "american morning" public media. i feel like we're having the same week. that's a legitimate question. let me ask it. can you be accountable to community and to fresh direct at the same time? >> absolutely. especially someone who has sort of been in the position that i have been in and then went and worked nationally and internationally and recognize that there's great things i can do to support communities like mine. i was looking at it from that position. this was consistent with the work i've been doing which is how do you come up with sustainable business mod thaels support folks on the ground. it would make perfect sense for me to take on this client from the economic development standpoint, thousands of jobs, from the food, security standpoint and also the fact that they actually have been committed to alternative fuels as well. >> let's walk through those three or four seconds. let's talk about the economic development one. the single toughest thing that

underserved communities often have to do is make a trade-off between environmental justice and economics. so fresh direct, if it sites in the bronx, will have $30 million in tax subsidies. routine practice on the part of localities to maintain business. we've been critical of that offer the years. >> except what i've seen and one of the reasons i was interested in this subsidy deal was this one was tied for the most part to job creation. >> explain that. >> they don't make the sdwrobs. they don't get any money. most of the deals out there from fed ex to yankees stadium of which many folks didn't have a problem with, they didn't talk so much about that. i looked at this one and realized that if these jobs do move to jersey or to long island as they could easily do, we lose about 2400 new york city jobs. because they're not going to travel that far. in addition, we won't even have the option of getting the

thousand extra jobs that this company has promised to create because of their tax subsidies are connected to it. >> let's talk about the food security piece. the second piece. >> sure. >> the food delivery is an interesting way of thinking about managing a food desert. in new orleans, we're also dealing with food deserts in parts of the city that are a little more remote from the central city. for example, new orleans east just don't have grocery stores. wendell pierce, currently trying to open stores. but the other model is delivery of those food to the underserved communities. but then you have the problem, the environmental problem of truck traffic and smog. how do we balance that? >> there's a big difference between say, community gardens and all the way up to what are we going to go with gmos. in between, there's a range of things helping us with food security. e-commerce is a fantastic way of doing it. especially companies that are supporting local farmers, like the big farmers that have

happened upstate from here as well. also, how do you create opportunities for new food-based entrepreneurs who can sell their food through the distribution system that is fresh direct. all of these things can really help support the idea of what's happening in our poor communities. we all know it's not that easy to find good food in the communities. the fact that this company, fresh direct is working with the usda to collect food stamps in those communities so you get decent food delivered to people's doors. i think that, to me, it made it calculated. it was a very calculated decision to work specifically for this company because of the benefits that i saw it providing to the community. >> it's an interesting position you find yourself in. i'm sorry we don't have a ton of time. i wanted to give you a moment. i think you've earned the right to have a say in a moment like this. so i appreciate you coming and addressing it. >> yeah. it's interesting that women -- people talk about wanting more women leaders, yet, they tend to not like the ones they have.

i don't think that any man would have gotten the kind of treatment that i've gotten. i stand right behind all the work that i've done and will continue to do so because i come with resources and talent and i will always use it to support -- to take that position to support my communities. >> feel free. double down, sister. thank you, majora carter. a rare and candid look at tennis sisters. venus and serena will yoms. williams. [ female announcer ] he could be your soulmate. but first you've got to get him to say, "hello." new crest 3d white arctic fresh toothpaste. use it with these 3d white products, and whiten your teeth in just 2 days. new crest 3d white toothpaste. life opens up when you do.

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what that's great. it won't take long, will it? no. okay. this, won't take long will it? no, not at all. how many of these can we do on our budget? more than you think. that didn't take very long, did it? this spring, dig in and save. that's nice. post it. already did. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. dig in and save with miracle-gro potting mix, a special buy at two bags for just $10. the stellar sisters of tennis dazzled in south carolina. serena williams, currently ranked number one in the world won the tournament which brings her to a whopping 49 world tennis association titles. venus williams, who has been struggling with an autoimmune disease had a good weekend, making it to the semifinals

where she was beaten by her sister. next weekend, they'll play together, facing off against sweden in the world group playoffs. these superstars of tennis have been winning so consistently and for so long, it's easy to forget how extraordinary they really are. the tale of their rise to tennis dominance is coming to the big screen in a new documentary called venus and serena. let's look at one piece of the film that shows how tight thesis terse really are. >> when they're in florida, they live together. they practice together. they're doing the same thing. they have the same goal. >> serenserena, thank you for p half the rent and keeping this establishment in the fine place that it is. >> adorable thing happened. they came in and there was a big chair. that was the only place they could really sit. i thought we have to get another chair or something. said no, we can sit here. they were trying to scoot in this chair together.

and their hips are touching. i am cracking up because i thought, what it was telling me how close they truly are connected. >> with me now in the studio the co-director, michelle major. the hardest thing for me to remember is they're grown women in their 30s. i still remember the williams girls and you have amazing footage of them as girls. whr where did that come from? lots of different sources. espn. people filmed them back in the day and their father richard was instrumental in training -- giving them media training from very young and inviting reporters to meet them. because he knew when they were four and five that they were going to be number one and two in the world. i don't know how. he claims he knew before they were born, right? part of what is fascinating about this film. the girls are amazing. but richard williams, he's fascinating. >> well, he planned this. as he says, as you'll see in the film, he says he had a 78-page document where he planned out

their entire future before they were born and actually he said to his wife after seeing a tennis match, you know, they saw a tennis match, a woman won $40,000. back in the day, that was a lot of money. we're going to have a girl and she's going to be a tennis star and make all this money. they had two. and lo and behold it happened. >> not just a tennis star, but incredible athletes. i respect them as athletes. but to watch their work ethic and just how taxing this has been on their bodies. 30 is not old but it is tough to be 30 and to be a tennis superstar at level they are. >> absolutely. it was just something to -- when we went into doing this documentary, they weren't ill and they hadn't had any injuries like this. like the year that we filmed. we were planning on doing this wonderful film about them triumph fg and winning everything that year. and serena is in the hospital and venus gets injured in the first match we go to. we were like, what are we going

to do? what is this film going to be? it turned into a comeback story in a sense and just showing how they strive so hard to be so great and how much they really love the game. >> how much is race connected to that striving, to that sense of hard work? it was a little bit hard -- sometimes i got a sense of them connecting to it as we are african-american women doing this and sims sometimes we're obsessive compulsive athletes and tennis players. >> as chris rock says in the film, being black is like having a weight and having a weight on your legs and training to jump higher. when you learn to maneuver it, then you're able to jump higher than anybody else and work harder than anybody else. because it took you -- it was harder to get there in the first place. i think that for them, that's definitely the case. >> why chris rock and the other one my husband kept asking is why is bill clinton in the movie? why did you pick these voices? >> we tried to pick people who knew them, liked them and were great, sort of people in their

own right. obviously, clinton being the president of the united states, he was president when they were -- during their rise. he called venus when she won her first grand slam. he said, actually this is a funny story. venus said to him, you know, can you stop raising our taxes. you know, she's like 19 or so. >> that's classic. >> went to him to have him tell that story. he ended up giving us more. >> she's a teenager. >> let's talk about venus. there's a moment when she's 14. she's having an interview saying yeah, i could beat that opponent and richard williams comes in because the journalist is kind of trying to say come on, you can't really beat her. he says stop it, she's 14 and the way that her competitive edge is that she has this confidence. in that moment, i thought, man, that is something. that sense that as a little girl, a little girl, she had such confidence. >> that confidence was instilled in both venus and serena from both their mother and father. he was protecting her and she

told me after seeing that we put that clip in the film, she said, can you put more? because that journalist was harassing me and i was really getting upset. because you know, they were being trained to be confident but they were still young. she said my dad came to rescue me and to really help me out. that's what he was doing. >> it was a pretty extraordinary moment. i watched the film last night with my 11-year-old and we had a debate about sense of self-confidence, about having tough teachers and you know, some people love tennis, some people love the williams sisters, but there were great messages in the film about confidence and hard work. >> absolutely. >> thank you for making it. >> thank you. to michelle major and up next, a letter, 21 pages long written in a jail. it changed the world. everyone's retirement dream is different; how we get there is not. we're americans. we work. we plan.

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show know, we here in nerdland, love a good political lesht. and this tuesday, april 16th, is the 50th anniversary of the day that martin luther king jr. wrote his letter from a birmingham jail. king was in jail for leading nonviolent direct action protests against racial segregation in birmingham. and while in jail, he received a public statement of caution and concern written to him by eight white religious leaders of the south. they were moderates, but they edg urged him to wait and to proceed with caution. king's letter was originally meant to be just a response to this small group. but after he put down his pen, king had written the manifesto of the civil rights movement, a compassionate and philosophical defense to unjust laws.

king wrote, there comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of does pair. he went on to say more and more people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. so celebrate this classic document of american thought and the five decades of progress that have followed in its wake. the birmingham public lish -- on tuesday, as a reminder that our continuing struggles are interconnected, people all over the globe will host public readings from the letter. one of the places holding a public reading is tulane

university where many of students and colleagues are participating in a checkation of king's works. >> while con fined here in the birmingham city jail i came across your recent activity unwise. for years now i have heard the word wait, it rings in the ear of every negro with piercing familiarity. this wait as almost always meant never. we know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppress sir. it might be commanded by the oppre oppressed. >> martin luther king jr. >> so you have just a moment on tuesday, take that moment to read the letter from a birmingham jail, a promise you're going to be glad that you did. that is our show for today, thanks to you at home for watching. i'm going to see you next saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern, but now it's time for a preview

of weekends with alex witt. >> i will talk to senator joe manchin about spare heading gun -- they called it a party in london, it was thrown to remember the late prime minister margaret thatcher. and why a famed journalist known for his front line coverage of a battle says he'll never go back to a war zone. why one death changed his mind. and every day since, we've worked hard to keep it. today, the beaches and gulf are open for everyone to enjoy. we've shared what we've learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. bp's also committed to america. we support nearly two-hundred-fifty thousand jobs and invest more here than anywhere else. we're working to fuel america for generations to come. our commitment has never been stronger.

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