rjs this morning my question, how does a company with no employees rake in billions in profit? plus, disaster recovery and the politics of survival. and my letter is addressed to mr. jackson in virginia. but first, president obama calls to an end to perpetual war. ♪ good morning. i'm melissa harris-perry. president obama put it all on the line with his counter terrorism speech on thursday. the president asserted his vision for the practical use of drone war fair, the possibility

of bounded presidential powers and a more measured approach going toward when it comes to the war on terror. beyond afghanistan, we need to bound these as a series of p persistent targeted efforts to dismantle specific extremists. >> by my reading, this was nothing short of sur racourageo. the president not only put his second term on the line but the future of the democratic party. here's what i think is the reality. the president has another three and a half years in the office. if any act of terrorism occurs on american soil or to american interest abroad in that time, political opponents are going to point to the tone shift which began in this speech on may 23rd

as the reason. for the president to say we will redefine the political war ffar was a spectacularly courageous act because for more than a decade nothing short of chest thumping militaristic swagger has counted as strong foreign policy. >> i believe many of the decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the american people. but i also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear, rather than foresight. >> acting out of fear may have been our immediate response, but it cannot continue as our main way of dealing with global terror. the president had to articulate how america could defend our borders and our citizens without giving into a self destructive global paranoia, which saps our revenue, undermines our commitments and distracts from

realistic threats. we just entered an entirely new age. >> i intend to engage congress about the existing use of force to determine how we can continue to fight terrorism without keeping america on a perpetual wartime footing. >> now be clear. the president was not tie dyeing his shirt and saying give us a plan. on thursday he made the case that his strategy drone warfare is more sophisticated and restrained. i get it. you're all collectively groaning and rolling your eyes at me. there is a consensus that drone warfare is unethical and kills

civilians. if putting our men and women on the front lines is a better alternative? and he simply doesn't think so. >> so it is false to assert that putting boots on the the ground is less likely to result in civilian deaths or less likely to create enemies in the muslim world. the results would be more u.s. deaths, more blackhawks down. more confrontations with local populations and it could easily escalate into new wars. >> it's been nearly 12 long and painful years since the tragedy of 9/11. and they would be hard pressed to support getting involved in another ground war. in iraq, affection, or really anywhere. on thursday the president made his case for why drone warfare will continue. he justified the killing of four american citizens in drone strikes, including anwar al

awlaki. >> when a u.s. citizen goes abroad to age warfare against america and is actively plotting to kill u.s. citizens and neither the united states nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting o at an incident crowd should be protected by the s.w.a.t. team. >> whether you agree or not t president did an amazing thing. he made the case. he risked a lot to make it. now it's time to debate it. at the table, lawrence corbs, assistant secretary of defense in ronald reagan's administration. hardis cabrade. a senior staff attorney at the center for constitutional rights. she focuses on government post 9/11 including drone strikes and guan guantanamo bay.

they are seeking accountability in the drone strike that killed three americans in yemen. ramsi is associate professor of law at the university of new york school of law where he directs the immigrants and noncitizen rights clinic. and david k. johnston, attorney and author of "the fine print." i suspect we have many disagreements. i saw the president as having made a politically courageous speech. am i wrong? >> i think we agree it was a good thing to reject the idea of perpetual warfare. it was good to articulate a vision about the time when the united states responds the way most countries respond to terrorism. which is using their own ordinary law, the constitution and where the use of military force really becomes the the exception and not the rule.

what i was troubled by or confused by is what he reasserted for the president. how far away are we from the future that he articulated? i heard a reassertion of the premise of the targeted killing program. against al qaeda not only in afghanistan. but loosely defined associated forces around the world. and that's the basic premise and the basic problem here. i didn't hear the refinements he talked about, well, it's a question about how meaningful they will be. but the premise remains, i think. >> right. and in fact, some have argued by making a case for drone warfare. by making a case that it may be better than boots on the ground. and putting soldiers can bring as extraalties not only to american troops but to the places where they are, that he then also opens the door for

drone warfare over and against americans at some point. >> the problem is the drones do bring an extraordinary amount of fear. and one of the issues that i have to add to the president's speech on thursday, he mentioned the classified policy guidance that is supposed to govern our use of drones going forward. the problem is it's pure executive fiat. it's an act that can be undone by this president of any future president. the checks and balances of our system have failed. she can tell you from her experience in your case. and then the bigger issue is that it's classified. we don't know what the criteria are. when the president says someone poses an imminent threat, what does that mean? the president says someone cannot be captured, what does that mean specifically? i want to be careful.

part of the reason i end up taking issue progresses around the issue is my sense that folks want to create something that is easy to say, look, these are clearly decisions that ultimately led to the death, for example, of american citizens. that without due process, that is appalling to us. and the reality is we do have a commander in chief in a kochly kated world. who should we invest with the decision except for the elected leade leader. >> the following is the oversight. this is an entrenchment. it's a normalization. we have no transparency into how the u.s. government goes about making the decisions. they are decisions that affect countless people worldwide. the numbers are staggering. nearly 2% are characterized as

militant leaders by some accounts. that's troubling. >> but when you say no oversight we have megs of congress briefed on this regularly. that should be oversight. that may be well failing to do their job. we have over 400 drone strikes. some have had significant numbers. i would agree with you that the courts have not been willing to listen to the cases. courts tend to be differential. we have 21-year-old police officers with the power and authority to kill somebody with the circumstances. and that's what the president was talking about when he used his sniper sample. so i tend to agree with you that somebody is going to have this kind of power. drones are here. they're not going away until new technology replaces them. >> well, drones just sort of are, right? the question is the kill list.

>> it's important to keep in mind drones are the latest in military force. you go from bayonets to tank to artillery and planes and other presidents have used military force before the war on terror. when i worked for president reagan, we bombed libya because we did not like the fact that the libyans were alleged to have killed some americans in berlin, in west berlin, in a disco tech. president clinton attacked afghanistan after we were blown up and also sedan. this is where osama bin laden had been before he got to afghanistan. i think what the president did was very courageous because this is a new thing. and we need to understand how we're going to use it. he's been telling congress like we have to inform congress when we have an intelligence act, a finding. and the fact of the matter is, we have been doing this a long

time. under president eisenhower, we didn't like the government of iraq -- i mean in iran. so we overthrew it. so the real key is, will all of the agencies of government fulfill the constitutional responsibilities. >> i want to come back to exactly this issue. >> i think we take this as a truism. executives never pull back power. and it sounded at least like he was opening the door for that. when we come back, more on the question of whether or not the president is willing to constrain executive power. [ male announcer ] need help keeping your digestive balance in sync?

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unless we discipline our thinking, our definition, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don't need to fight or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states. >> the idea that presidential power can be bound, that's something we haven't heard in a while. it's a far cry from the message of george w. bush towards the taliban after the tragic events of 9/11. >> give the united states full access to terrorist training camps so we can make sure they are no longer operating. these demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. >> that was a time when a wounded america was in search of answers and we're going to always remain vigilant, but the scope of how our leadership reacts going forward is going to have to change. the time for restraints on accountability is here. so let's talk about restraint and accountability. when we look at the numbers of drone attacks in pakistan we are looking at a total of 355

strikes. these are unofficial numbers, right? but 355 strikes with up ward of 3,000 people killed. 69 strikes killing more than 800 peel with militants, particularly 750 individuals and civilians also being killed. are we, in fact, in a place where our president is being held accountable? >> one thing is you notice they were from the new american foundation. they were not from the government. >> yep. >> if we're going to talk about transparency and oversight is how much we don't know still about this program. they haven't yet released basic data about the number of those killed, who they are, where the strikes are occurring, what exactly the criteria is. there is a presidential speech. this is a fact sheet released from the white house about what the criteria would be for targeting. we don't know basic things. we don't are the legal memos that justify the strikes.

and as far as congressional oversight, during the confirmation process for john brennan. it took the senate committee tasked with oversight of the program demanding the legal killings justified from the white house to get that basic information. that's as far as congressional oversight. and the the president didn't say how he would make that clear going forward. the one thing we know is the name of the 16-year-old boy who was killed. that came from a heckler. >> how about alabama key? 16-year-old american, killed by drones. is that the way we treat a 16-year-old american? why was he killed? can you tell us why he was killed? can you tell the muslim people their lives are as precious as our lives? >> so that woman is getting a lot of play because that is one thing that we have that -- in the name of a minor, a child,

killed not on the clear list. he was collateral damage in this. and it's become a rallying point for those who don't think the president is accountable. >> we represent him with our case. i don't want to give the president too much credit because it took two years. it was the right thing to do to acknowledge his death and three other american citizens. the rest of us have known that. it took the justice department two years to acknowledge the death. we have a case pending in federal court. the thing to do now is allow that case to go forward. if eric holder is going to justify the legality of the strikes, his justice department should be prepafr paired to defend the legality in court. >> we can't forget that the point about transparency is central. the difference between the libya scenario brought up is that we knew the reasons for u.s. military interventions in libya.

the bases were clear. the difference with the scenario where we have a police officer stopping someone on street, the problem here is we are talking about lethh lethal force agains ungnome numbers and we have little visibility into. as a public. as the american people. we have little visibility into the standards governing that radical use of force. >> his point is much broader than this. it's about the obama administration. they have this attitude that they don't have to answer questions from journalists if they don't like the questions. the journalist controls the this entirely. i wrote a piece about this. i was calling back to the dixon days and people wouldn't say who they were when they answered the

phone and that suggested something troubling. >> walk with me an early. you are an investigative journalist who teaches at a law school. talk about the investigative journalism piece for a moment. i'm a schoolteacher who happens to have a television show, and i sometimes miss the amount of emotional angst and potentially also sort of structural difference that is going on with this white house. i hear it from journalists all the time. that this white house is fundamentally different. it's very hard for me to believe that vis-a-vis the eight years of the george bush administration or the bill clinton era, there's really something structurally different? >> yes, yes. a lot of people skrit sized reporters in the bush years for letting people talk. i name people by name, rank and serial number. the reagan administration was much more open. i had vigorous tough

conversations on the phone and in person with people from the reagan administration. they may not like your questions, but they respected that it was their job to answer them. the obama people are like, well, what are you asking that for? what do you want to know that for? if they don't like the questions, they don't get back to you in many cases. >> let me tell you something here which i think is critical. the press let us down in invasion of iraq. they did not do their job. that's when they blew it. the congress, when they passed the authorization for the u.s. use of military force, the language was very broad. and they didn't put a date on it, unlike the patriot act. what the president is trying to do is say, okay. we have to end this. you have to this play your job. let's work together. we'll set down the ground rules and they were telling congress about the drone strikes. now if our elected legislators

don't want to play that job, and it goes back to the point in the beginning, they don't want to be blamed either. >> yep, yep. this is a fundamental question. tt it's at the core of the reluctance around gitmo. that's the other deep issue. we are going to cuba when we come back. "waiting on t inin ining hey! did you know that honey nut cheerios

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in may of 2009. >> by any measure the cost of keeping it open far exceed the complications involved in closing it. it should be closed throughout my campaign. and that is why i ordered it closed within one year. >> that year came and went. more than a year after taking office the president spoke about his frustrations of not being able to deliver on his campaign promise of closing gitmo. >> we have succeeded on delivering a lot of campaign promises that we made. one where we have fallen short is closing guan town moe. >> adding to the equation are the 103 detainees on a hunger strike to protest the perpetual confinement without due process. this is what the president had to say about that escalating situation last month. >> i don't want these individuals to die.

they are trying to manage the situation as best as they can. all this should reflect on why are we doing this? >> there's the question. >> my view is a complete lack of political will on the president's part. there's a pattern on the presidency when it comes to the attention issues to make a grand speech, sign a piece of paper and act as if the problem is solved. now we need concrete follow-through. lifting the moratorium is a necessary first step. i commend the president on doing that. it is not sufficient. what we need to see are prisoners being released and everything else he said was not helpful or downright harmful.

>> yes. i want to get to baghra in a moment. i want to pause for just a second. we use the language of detention. on this one i don't care about the drones but i have deep outrage about guantanamo. so what the circumstances that your clients are facing? >> well, right now i represent -- my students and i remit a number of prisoners at guantanamo. we received official confirmation from the u.s. government that he is being forced fed by a tube. we also received official confirmation that he was injured on a raid. my understanding is that he was shot at close range five times use i using rubber coated steel bullets, which are potentially

lethal. these are men who have been in u.s. custody for years. if the u.s. government cannot make a case against them, they should be released and sent home. >> then the security question emerges. ian if they were not enemies of the state. after being detained in those types of circumstances, have we now created them as enemies of the state, and if so, then how do we manage the ethical problem of having, in fact, generate that had sense of them being enemies and yet it's our fault that we have done it and yet the fear of releasing them to a place like yemen. >> i can speak for my complaints. i can tell you that people who i know and i have met want to be released. they want to return to their families. there are hundreds of men in europe, resettled in europe, peacefully rebuilding their

lives without incident. there's an overblown myth of what is going to happen. the sky is not going to fall. they're going to live their lives. even to yemen. one of our clients was released to yemen in 2009. six men were returned. they're living there with their families. >> people want to go home. >> they want to go home. >> just yesterday i spoked to a reclient in yemen, a release client in algeria they're all living their lives with their families. up wards of 77% have not done anything remotely questionable or suspect. >> i'm sorry. go ahead. >> obviously there are risks but the benefits far outweigh whatever risks you have. i can't tell you how disappointed i am with obama? he backed off after congress put up some resistance. he could have used executive

power to have done nor and everything. then they threw greg craig, the white house counsel on this, under the bus. and you have too many people who had been in government before and said, well, you have to focus on this. he was different. we hoped he would be different. well, you have to work on health care. >> we are going to stay on the issue. although he has constraints, there are things he can do. i want to talk about what he can do when we come back. ♪ living in america [ phil ] when you have joint pain and stiffness... accomplishing even little things can become major victories. i'm phil mickelson, pro golfer. when i was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, my rheumatologist prescribed enbrel for my pain and stiffness, and to help stop joint damage. [ male announcer ] enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma, other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders, and allergic reactions have occurred.

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available out there. i knew devry university would give me the skills that i needed to make one of those tech jobs mine. we teach cutting-edge engineering technology, computer information systems, networking and communications management -- the things that our students need to know in the world today. our country needs more college grads to help fill all the open technology jobs. to help meet that need, here at devry university, we're offering $4 million dollars in tech scholarships for qualified new students. learn more at devry.edu. given my administration's relentless pursuit of al qaeda's leadership. there is no justification for congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should have never been opened. >> that was president obama on thursday at the national defense university making his best case for why guantanamo bay should be

but is not yet closed. you were saying there are things he can do prior to closing. >> my understanding is he is send people back home and has a lot of authority that he is not using here. people should be offended by this. one of the reason we had the revolution is the british would just lock you up forever if they wanted to. this is toetdly ochbtive to our values and it makes us look terrible to the roast of the world. >> the reason we don't have this particular sort of response is really about a discriminatory perspective that these people with these names simply don't deserve the same human rights as the rest of us. >> that's the distinguishing factor. it's the reason the policies are acceptable and applied to certain demographics. that would be unfathomable being applied to others. think about being taken away

from your family, being thrown in a caribbean gu log for seven yous. you have not been tried. you have not been charged. you don't know if you're going to see the family. you have to start there to see why the men are going on hunger strikes. it is a life gesture intended to exercise their adignity in the only way they can in these ordinary circumstances. >> given they have gone on hunger strikes. the only reason why president talked about guantanamo is because of the hunger strike. right now there are over 100 people on hunger strikes for three months. 30 people are being force fed, life sustained on liquid formula. it's going to get worse. people i talked to do not want to die.

i wanted to hear an urgency of action that matches the urgency of the situation. the existing authority that he has despite the restrictions of congress. there's a national security waiver under which he are transfer 86 men that he, his own people, have said don't need to be there. the fact that he didn't talk about the group -- >> and not just talk about them but say this is what i will do next week. >> the secretary of defense can give a waiver. at the airport the other day i ran into an old colleague from the reagan administration. real conservative person. he did not want to let him. i said what about the fact that it costs a million dollars to keep each one there? he said, wow. let them go. >> the important point is the president is addressing there are things that make us americans that persist throughout the world.

sometimes we do the wrong things # but then we have to make a choice as a count to say that was incorrect and we are now going to pull back. this is the time to reaffirm our americanness. the hunger strikers are not trying to die. they're trying to generate awe taunmy in the context of something that stripping their humanity and the language of before i would be a slave i would be buried in my grave and go home and be free. thank you to ramiz. up next, speaking of slavery, i'm going to talk about a republican who doesn't seem to understand what the word slave means. i have a letter to the next potential lieutenant governor. [ kitt ] you know what's impressive?

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this week we had our first glimpse at the nominees. after ten hours and four ballots, delegates to the convention inthese yastically nominated their choice for lieutenant governor, a right wing reverend you've probably never heard of before now whose only political claim to fame was winning 5% of the vote when he ran for the u.s. senate last year, who is now poised to hold the second highest office in the state of virginia. since he's a relative novice in this game, i thought i better write him a letter with a bit of advice. dear bishop e.w. jackson. can i call you ew? because i heard what you have to say and the it's disgusting.

you must choose your words carefully. but it's late for that, isn't it? the time you called the repeal of don't ask don't tell a disaster of historic proportions and said it must be reinstated or when you said gays and lesbians are perverted, very sick people. can't forget your conspiracy theory classic about president obama having "muslim sensibil y sensibiliti sensibilities" and seeing the world from a muslim perspective. and there was the time you claimed liberalism have done more to kill black folks than ku klux klan ever did. your interpretation of the constitution's clause counting black people as three-fifths of a person. and then there's my personal favorite. your complaint about african-americans. what did you call it? slavish devotion to the

democratic party? look, i know you proclaimed proudly last week that you are not an african-american, just an american. if you want to deny your connection to black people in the country, you do not have the right to insult us by using slave as though it is some kind of slur. slavish? if by slavish you mean hard working, striving for freedom and laying the economic foundation of the country i'll be that. you see, you've got it all wrong. your choice to join the republican party doesn't make you more free or independent than black people who choose to be democrats. it just makes you really good at figuring out how to stand out in a radical, right wing base devoid of diversity. and that's not particularly original. just ask herman cain and allen west. as for your campaign strategy, you may want to keep one thing in. the very people you targeted with the hateful words are the same people who comprise the voter base that pushed virginia from red to solemnly purple and elected president obama not

once, but twice. so good luck with thoo. as much as i would like to file you away with the colorful cost of tea party characters we have seen come and go, i just can't. although the lieutenant governor position is largely ceremonial in virginia, it's time to break a tie in the evenly split state senate that matters. we saw it with virginia's current lg broke a tie and effectively delayed tougher restrictions in the state voter i.d. law. but more than that, the gig you're going for is a step away from the most powerful position in a crucial swing state that can turn the tide of national elections, which is why my feelings about you emerging notorious are best summed up by your tweet in response to lgbt pride month. well, it just makes me feel icky all over. ew. sincerely, melissa.

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there were protesters this week. not because of the irs targtding certain groups. not because people are still mad about fast and furious. protesters were demonstrating in front of the justice department in washington for a much more visceral, personal reason. banks, they say, are illegally stealing their hopes. they want the d.o.j. to do something about it. several protests began on monday as just over 400 homeowners joined several other protesters gathered in washington. speaking out about the lack of criminal prosecutions against the financial institutions which created the foreclosure crisis. according to reports by tuesday, the protest results in 30 arrests and several instances of

law enforcement unnecessarily using tasers on activists, according to eyewitnesss. yes, protests against the government in a nonviolence fashion and getting tasered for your trouble. all this comes after sign of of an improvement in the housing market, including a new survey indicating the number of americans in the foreclosure process fell by 25% since april of last year. when we see scenes like this, she successfully fought off the oe foreclosure of her grandmother's home, tasers by authorities on the doorstep of the justice department, everyone including eric holder should understand this crisis still requires attention. more importantly, the executive director of the greatest new orleans fair housing action center. they took part in the protest this week. since you were there, i want to start with you.

what were the protests aimed at? >> the starting point is people are furious that the attorney general said banks are too big to fail. instead of investigating, it may hurt the economy. and people have had their homes taken illegally. people trapped in a bad loan. people evicted from their house at gunpoint said this is crazy. the people who caused the crisis are too big to jail. and it's okay to wave it off. >> oh, the housing crisis is finally over. foreclosing is falling. why are banks still foreclosing? what is going on here? >> banks may be doing better, but america is still struggling. are banks too big to taser? quite frankly there's so much work to be done in the communities. there's a report out of minnesota that shows that the disaster is still happening.

140,000 homes have been foreclosed on. $20 billion of wealth lost because of this disaster. and so there may be people in the market taking advantage of the low interest rating and buying new homes. if you lost your home, this is still a disaster for you. >> so on this wealth loss, because i know you have written about this. what has happened in terms of the foreclosure crisis and the notion of the evaporation of wealth? >> well if you go way back to when the crisis started, $7 trillion of wealth was lost in equity and homes. communities of color specifically were targeted for subprime loans. what happens especially in communities of color is foreclosure continues. 1 million people are underwater. the homes are worth less than they're paying. if kbrour underwater, you're more likely to go into foreclosure. it really comes down to last year almost $200 billion of

additional wealth was lost in communities around in. and with the amazing number of this report, i guess i can pitch it well as a report now. >> absolutely. >> wasted wealth report says that in 2000, i think 2005, there was a 7-1 gap between african-americans and whites in wealth. so what is extraordinary is the recession has been a massive transfer of wealth out of poor communities and working class communities to the rich banks. >> but then there's something that can be done. you brought up minnesota. they just passed a homeowners bill of rights. but it requires loan servicers offer, allowing them to sue if already foreclosed upon. is this the kind of thing we need the justice department to make sure is available to all americans? >> when a disaster happening, often times once it's out of the box and the disaster is spread all over the world, it's too

late then. o the one entity who can tact the most quickly when the disaster is happening is really the authority that oversees the disaster. if the department of justice would have stepped in at the very beginning and prosecuted bankers acting illegally, folks are afraid of jail. particularly as bankers. and so i've got to say, there are a lot of things we can do to offset the problems. this will send a strong message so that it won't happen in the future. >> is that what we need here? >> absolutely we need to jail the characters. that's pocket change. california has the most foreclosures. last year they passed the homeowners bill of rights there. foreclosures are down because people did the same thing

minnesota did. they passed a law that said you can't simultaneously foreclose on somebody while they're trying to get a loan modification. this points out that it's not just happening at a secular trend. stay with me, both of you. when we come back we're going to go live to oklahoma for the latest on politics relief. plus the $30 billion company with no employees. it turns out it's harder the grill an apple that you may otherwise have thought. there's more nerd land at the top of the hour. i have low testosterone. there, i said it.

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where it's been five days since the tornado touches down monday's twister was one of the most destructive tornadoes to descend upon us in decades. 24 people killed. seven of them, 8 and 9-year-old students 1200 homes were destroyed or damaged. all told the tornado caused 2 billion dlarz worth of damage today the city of moore is attempting to return to some version of normalcy with three high school graduates scheduled to go on as planned. for more on that i want to go live to moore, oklahoma, where charles hadlock is standing by. hi, charles. >> reporter: hi. good morning, mels. today everyone gets to take a break to celebrate something positive. one in particular, south moore

high school. that's where a lot of families were affected by the storm. the school itself really wasn't. but a lot of the its who went there, the parents lost their home. one student buried her mother yesterday and today she will graduate high school. as you mentioned, president obama will come here to see the devastation firsthand. and there's a lot to see. the path of the storm was 22 miles long. at the widest it was one mile wide and at the strongest it was an ef-5 with winds more than 200 miles an hour. that was near the elementary school that took so many lives there. also looking forward on wednesday there will be a concert, healing in the heartland. a benefit put together by blake shelton and his friends. reba mcintire, vince gill and miranda lambert will be performing in oklahoma city. a benefit that will be televised

live on nbc. all of the proceeds will go to help the victims here who are trying to come back from this terrible tragedy in the center of oklahoma. melissa. >> thank you to charles hadlock for keeping us up to date. >> sure. tomorrow when president obama travels to oklahoma he will be stepping back into his well worn role as comforter in chief. it was only six months ago the president visited new york and new jersey and walked through the wreckage left behind by hurricane sandy. the joining of forces between federal and state governments was best exemplified by the broamance between the president and chris christie. it was not the first time strange bedfellows found love in the time of a hurricane. once president bush got to look at new orleans from the ground instead of the air, he and then mayor nagin had their own

photo-op. for the appearance of intergovernmental love fest doesn't reflect the reality f those most in need are often not feeling the love. by now the incompetence indifference in failure of the government to hurricane katrina has been well documented. katrina was not an equal opportunity hurricane. in new orleans's poorest and most vulnerable people were left unaccounted for in the city's response plan. the resources were unreleased after the storm. some of the same calls for help remain unanswered. on tuesday the spark may be rekindled. the recent warning is any indication. >> the president kept every promise that he made. and so i many are still waiting

to see evidence of the $60 billion in sandy relief funds approved by congress. mostly for new jersey and new york. those still living in cardboard boxes or on the sofas of friends and families. still wrestling with insurance companies for the funds to build. before they have to face the start in june of what is forecasted to be an extremely active hurricane season. one of the people joining me at the table, kathy zito just returned to her home after it was ravaged during hurricane sandy. and the current mayor of joplin, missouri, who was vice mayor when joplin was hit by one of the worst tornadoes in american history and james perry, executive director of the new orleans fair actions hougsing center just yesterday addressed the bar association in d.c. on

disaster recovery. he is in full disclosure, also my husband. and david k. johnston a law professor at syracuse university and author of the fine print. so i want to start with you. are you feeling as governor christie said, as though everything is working out real well? >> i am not feeling the love. not at all. it is a disgrace the way we're being treated. the way we're being avoided from the president, the mayor and the governor showing up 17 days after sandy o to come to staten island is obscene. we're not a foreign country. if you don't want to drive, jump on the ferry and come across and see us. 17 days, disgraceful. and to come and promise us the world. we're going to help you. we're going to give you. we're going to direct you. direct you to nowhere. >> and you represent in your personal story what is true in

these disasters. in your case you have a husband suffering from ms, and therefore has a disability and so you're part of the vulnerable. >> he's extremely disabled. he spent 17 days sitting in a scooter because we didn't have a bed for him. on the seventh day after the storm we went to red cross and fema to get the help. just get me a bed. any kind of bed, something. my family will lift him. get us the bed. no problem. give us the number. no one calls. one week. go back down. two weeks, no one calls. three weeks, no one calls. they never called. but after the 17th day on facebook, he said please, my friend is in desperate need of a bed. someone in 30 minutes got me a bed. >> james, the story that i'm hearing from katie is very similar to so many stories of our friends and neighbors and

even experiences that you had post-katrina. >> sure. it is true that in new orleans the progress and recovery comes for the resillans of individual people. the situations that individuals can't do for themselves government is supposed to step in and provide help and assistance. we have a government that is not designed to take on these issues. and it's more difficult when politics get in the way. >> i know in new orleans in the case of sandy and undoubtedly oklahoma, it is folks who are elderly. people who are disabled. so like as a city official, how do you say, okay, as we're thinking about the next time a disaster comes, how do you make sure the most vulnerable are accounted for, attested for,

rather than assuming the 40-year-old man with a car who is able-bodied, who has plenty of extra income to buy gas to put in it to drive away? >> well, that's one thing to have a plan. whether you're elder, whether you're young, whether you're the 40-year-old who has the car, you have to have a plan. you hope something like that never happens, but when it does you have to follow the plan. not saying everyone will have the shelter to seek but you have to have some kind of plan, and that's what the city had. >> what i find compelling and difficult, you have the government who is supposed to be here in the catastrophic moments. but then it's like the private sector, facebook is able to get

you a bedfaster than fema or red cross. >> the problem is america does not have a plan. fema is only supposed to come in and deal with the disaster for a short period of time. they get in and get out. fema's entire budget for 2012 is $10 billion. but katrina cost america more than $100 billion. there's no way fema can take on the issue by themselves. considering republicans are constantly trying to defund fema and take money away tr everything dealing with disaster. it's an interesting thing about oklahoma. senator coburn has worked so hard to take funding away from other disaster recovery efforts, and he's now in the very situation of the people he serves needing the funding that he's denied others. >> and what is he saying? he's saying we have to cut spending elsewhere or people in my state do not get help. >> yes! at least he stands by it. we were not dealing first of all what with need to do in terms of

the infrastructure which i have written in the daily beast about. so we are going to continue to have problems. the law no longer requires provision of funds services and verizon has suggested it will never provide thumb service. that's the future. we have to minimize harm and maximize benefit in the most efficient way. we had 30 years of government bad. government terrible. therefore we don't have people who say, how do we do this the best way? if you're a responsible homeowner, have your insurance in place. what has your insurance been like? >> well, here's my life due to my insurance and fema. and red cross. >> these are the paper ls. >> there they are. little scraps and all kinds of things you need to hang onto. >> it's going to get bigger.

>> a lot bigger, i'm sure. insurance has said we're going to be there to take care of you. i had flood insurance. hi flood insurance is for $250,000 which covers everything but your content. that's fine. i don't need content. i need a house and a place to live. but you don't get the money that you need. $207,000 worth of damage and so far i have received just shy of $100,000. but i did get something from state farm that was wonderful. i got a letter of cancellation. so last month on top of everything else i find out come the end of june, i need new insurance. who is picking me up? >> that will be easy to get. >> state farm, you can forget about that. i want to ask you about what folks in oklahoma should be expected in terms of the long term. you are months and months out

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one of our guests, kathy zito, who is a survivor of superstorm sandy got this letter from her insurance company that says we regret to inform you that we cannot continue to provide your homeowners policy insurance coverage and went onto say in order to avoid a lapse in coverage, you should consider alternative insurance options. kathy, this is an extraordinary example of why, in fact, we need a safety net. wow have been left without any kind of safety net. >> zero. there's been none. and no one is helping. not the governor.

not the mayor. the mayor is just -- he's just gone on my book. he has done nothing. he has removed everything we're rebuilding and cleaning up. people just started to get insurance money. so all it is everywhere. we are living in filth. so when you hear that sort of thing. >> i think it's important that you have to have a communication first of all. your teens get together. you have your city manager. you have your city attorney, you have your public information officer. they have to work as a cohesive unit in order to get information out. they work hand-in-hand with

fema. you as a city take control of the disaster of your recovery. that is what is supposed to happen. that's what happened in our city. >> i don't know. i don't even know. sleeping. it was a marathon coming up. >> this is the moment when we have to rely. i'm thinking, in the context of katrina, for example, for a local government it would be pretty tough. the local government itself was wiped out. somewhat different than what happened in the context of either tornado or in the context of sandy. but the federal government should have been there and in some ways made policies worse. >> sure, in louisiana the government said we'll create something that can come through. they named it road home. and they paved the road through a grant program. we found overtime the grant program paid people in white neighborhoods more money than people in african-american neighborhoods. which was very troubling.

>> so if you go to the lower ninth ward right now in new orleans, stst still unrebuilt. because of the major flaw in the program. we litigated against the home program and got a great settlement to help people rebuild. in the end, this is a fundamental problem where government was not well prepared. even though there's not nug progress in hurricane sandy, there's a multiagency task force working together. even the problems we had in louisiana, when we look at the plans for new jersey and new york, those aren't there. we are going to continue to learn. it's the reason you need a serious disaster infrastructure to fix the problems long-term. >> and you really do. we were looking at what the weather service is saying about what we're looking at. we're looking at 20 strong named storms. maybe seven of them turning into hurricanes. >> well, where we have lived

since 1940 in a meteorogically severe -- we are going to have more storms, more problems with big fires. along the jersey shore, atlantic city is sinking because they have drawn the water out for drinking fresh water. we are going to face a whole series of fundamental problems. and if government doesn't exist for the purpose of helping us deal with these problems, then the options are not pretty. >> yeah. >> and i'm thinking, mayor, wen we think about the cost or the disruptions, sometimes we don't think about the full human cost, family separation in the context of the storm. permanent loss of wealth if you lose a home that you can never get back into. school disruptions for kids. and even the experience of someone who is dealing with a disability who 17 days without a bed could mean, life altering

problems, right? how do we get to a place to think about the longer term human costs. >> there should be something in place with people with disabilities. no one informed her. she was at a meeting. besides the fact of sleeping in his wheelchair for 17 days just took his first shower last saturday. so nothing is accessible for him. no hotels are left. everybody got to the hotels. thank god they have a place to go. i have family. but there's no facilities for this. people said you can come the hospital and go there and bring everything. i need to transport a man that can barely sit up, then bring the hoyer to be able to lift him and bring the own chair so he can be strapped in. we should have been given options and opportunities. don't tell us we can go into manhattan into a hotel, because then i'm leaving my husband with

no one to watch him during the day. what's going on? >> so for people with the elderly, for people with disabilities, for people with young children, these tr the challenges, those longer-term human costs. >> right. and i think there's -- i know the american red cross and fema are supposed to have -- i know. i know. >> i'm hearing you. >> because we had that in joplin. we're singing fema's praise, and now i'm sitting here like whoa, they have done an exceptional job in joplin. >> and it's better now than it was earlier and there are still gabs. i do want to come back and talk about another aspect of disaster. we may have been in a quiet period there is a different kind of disaster that is happening all around us that we are not paying any attention to. our infrastructure. our infrastructure is going to create these kinds of disasters all over the country. hey kevin...still eating chalk for heartburn?

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effectively mobilizing response to a natural disaster requires tackling dual challenges, preplanning for the uncertainties of mother nature and putting the gears of bureaucracy into motion when the uncertainty catches us by surprise. what about when the disasters are entirely predictable? we got the answer on thursday when a large section of a bridge on a major route collapsed into the icy river below. they were thankfully no fatalities. but the several vehicles on the bridge when it collapsed and the occupants had to be rescued from the water. that is just one of 12% of highway bridges nationwide.

of 6,000 bridges categorized at structurally deficient. they shouldn't be surprising. a report card issued this year gave the american infrastructure a "d" minus with an estimated $3.6 trillion needed to bump that up to an "a." i'm sorry. it was a "d" plus. i was feeling it should get a "d" minus because of the collapsed bridge. maybe you don't know the tornado is coming. but you know your bridges are at a "d." the only thing getting above a "c" is solid waste. that's a "b" minus. >> we have an andestment in

public infrastructure roads, bridges, dams. we are consuming it. we will be poorer in the future. commerce depends on the tablt to move goods and services around. we have to have safe water and high irhealth costs. we have to have pipelines that don't explode like the ones that took out a whole city block. the state official in charge of finding out if the pipelines are safe. so we are using up wealth. take away the commonwealth and we can become beangladesh. so if we don't spend the money we have the lowest interest rates in 700 years. it will create jobs. the jobs will bring in tax

revenues. this will go away. we could go back to a surplus. i heard a leading conservative say that we're not going to put the money into it. we can't afford it. if we can't afford the infrastructure and the chinese can afford it, if we don't then we are choosing to be poor in a more dangerous world. i have a piece up on the daily beast about this. >> the katrina dast is often presented as the natural disaster about the hurricane. >> it wasn't a natural disaster at all. that's one of the things. katrina did not hit the city of new orleans. it missed. the federal levies failed because they hadn't been maintained by the federal government. senator landrieu for years and years and years before katrina urged and pushed the federal government to appropriately spend to fix our levies. but they didn't.

and so the levies failed. and then the federal government has to pay for it anyway. so you can spend smart in the first instance. the environment is getting hotter. water is rising. we're going to have more and more disasters. it just means we're going to suffer more in the future. >> you care about bridges. >> it's the only way. >> so what is in trying to leave sandy you end up on bridges that are insufficient, inadequate? >> it's not okay. you know, somebody needs to be helping us. somebody needs to be watching over us. that is not our job. it's the government's job. help us do the right thing. everybody is saying for 30 # years or so they were supposed to build something out there to

help avoid -- we were still going to get water regardless because it wasn't a hurricane. that was a tsunami that came through us. they need to do something to avoid this. don't sell the houses closer. keep some land going. when we ask for the government we paid in, we are taxpayers. thank you to kathy. thank you to mayor colbert, and i love the interaction between the two of you. it's just lovely. david is going to hang out with us. thank you to james, perry, my husband. also the apple of congress' eye. how apple ceo teamed up and managed to tame the lawmakers ready to do battle over taxes. [ male announcer ] this is george. the day building a play set begins with a surprise twinge of back pain... and a choice. take up to 4 advil in a day or 2 aleve for all day relief.

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on tuesday a powerful senate investigation's sub committee meant to demand answers for the ceo of the most valuable company in the world. apple is based in california in 2012 enjoyed sales of $157 billion. that's $47 billion in profit in just one year. and what the senators wanted cook to explain were the findings from this report. and they pay no u.s. taxes even though the businesses are run from the united states. one subsidiary called it aoi, manages to have no legal tax residents at all. so it doesn't pay taxes to any country. despite polling in $30 billion in revenue in the past four years, and get this, it has no

employees. $30 billion in revenue in a company with no employees. carl levin called to set up the holy grail of tax avoidance. they have used a variety of o offstore structures to shoot billions of dollars in profits away from the united states and into ireland where apple has negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less than 2%. or about $10 billion in tax avoid dance per year. understanding the opices of these numbers, tim cook had come prepared. >> we pay all the taxes we owe every single dollar.

we not only comply with the law. cook's testimony continued. not only did he win praise from the senators, some of whom proudly referenced their own iphones as proof of their mac kred. but he says it was the u.s. tax policy that had it all wrong. that it was congress' fault, not wall street. with me at the table, a senior fellow at the center for american progress. union organizer, steven lerner. and author of the fine print. how big companies use plain english to rob you blind. so who am i supposed to be mad at? is this apple's fault? is this the u.s. congress's fault? this seems wrong. >> very large companies, that's

2,600 out of 6 million companies in america, they actually can make money off the tax system. my column is about how apple will profit off taxes. if you can delay paying a tax for 30 years, the investment will be more than the value of the taxes because it's an interest-free loan. you and i have our taxes paid out before we get them. big companies pay in the future. >> so i woke up at h:30 in the morning, got the coffee and tried to understand transfer pricing and the way that this generates the problem that cook is not wrong. that everything that is happening is legal, and yet somehow it feels -- it feels unfair in comparison to the american taxpayers. >> the fact is it's immoral because they know what they're doing. we need a tax system taxes you on where you sell the things.

basically the united states gets close to 70% of the things sold by the companies in the united states. we only get taxes on maybe 50%. so we're losing $50 billion, $60 billion a year so they can get these loopholes. and congress basically should say, we tax you on where you sell. >> well, it's saying that you're doing various kinds of things within the company itself, and so one part of the company sells it to another party of the company. >> transfer rights is where you sell something, you would never sell to anybody else. >> and if your left pocket is your irish pocket, then that's where you put the profits. >> the way this works in apple's case an there's an article coming up on monday where she calls it bray sin by the standards of companies like

google and other tax avoiders. so the congressmen are right to be offended. apple is in the practice of income shifting is really out on the far end of the spectrum in terms of how they do it. but the irs could significantly cut boo the practice on its own. it's afraid to go after congress. technically the way apple does it and the other big companies is for the foreign subsidiaries, literally there's a system they call check the box where they can file in the forms, check the box and from the irs, that subsidiary does not exist. >> but we wonder, as we have this kind of conversation, when we talk about fairness, is that just a ridiculous way to talk about american business. fairness is not the issue. they're following the law. be but they make the law and then say i'm not breaking it.

the system is so unbalanced the corporations are so rich that they can make the law whatever they want. ads we have talked about before, they avoid taxes on unwednesday and cut workers' wages on the other end. then they avoid pensions. then they don't pay local taxes. then today say workers get food stamps so we are sub disy dizing the companies that avoid taxes. the whole thing is crazy. ultimately the change that comes home to me is these are not american corporations. they don't care about the country. it's a convenient place to have a headquarters. >> i want to come back. i'm wondering if it's naive to think of companies in the way we thought about the american auto industry, like if apple is, in fact, how will we manage that? more when we come back.

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we are discussing an issue that extends well beyond apple. all in all close to $2 trillion stashed by u.s. companies overseas. a trillion here, a trillion there. and soon enough you're talking about real money. they are underwritten and undersupported by an american government. >> right. the biggest abusers of the tax are the tech and where would they be without the defense department creation? and they're very dependent on the fact that the defense department heavily subsidizes the education of physicists and mathematicia

mathematicians. pharma gets a tremendous amount of help. they get huge tax breaks and then go and lobby for loopholes and in the case of tech, bobly for visases saying we can't get enough good workers in the state. >> i kept feeling as though the congressman were more afraid of him. more afraid apple could exit the american place. >> the real problem is campaign finance. these people all depend on getting these corporate donations after the citizens united case, there's no limit on what they can do. and we do know you can't get elected without a lot of money. so they are afraid of them. >> that's why they're waving the iphones around. >> and we're not the only ones. david cameron said the same thing. we need a worldwide

international agreement on corporate taxes. until we do, the people will keep exploiting. >> if i happen to turn on msnbc an i'm normally a fox news watcher and i hear guests saying we need a worldwide decision on taxes, i start freaking out. hey, the whole idea is to let the free market do its thing and you can't, in fact, intervene in the corporations in this way. and in fact the whole cook testimony shows us the whole american problem is in the corporate taxes are too high. they want free markets and global trade. then they say we need to make the economy and america work. they argue two different things depending on if moment. the real argument they make is they are going to make as much money as they can no matter what. as we do tax policy and other

policy, we have to remember they have no loyalty, in love, no care for anything in the country except to make more money. it amazed me that cook went on offense. he said, i could have stolen more money. >> yeah, we're good guys. we pay the taxes. >> yeah, we pay 2%. first of all, there's no such thing as a free market, which is a technical term for economists. all markets have rules. and what steve is pointing out is they want to gain rules so we can make sure that you don't have unions. that you have government contracts. that you have all the hidden subsidies and we have rules that says we'll put our tax where we don't have money. the key is you siphon them out to a zero tax company. enhances your profits.

>> i keep trying to figure out how to get paid in british pound. how do you end with a currency as one thing but spending it in another era. that's what taxes are. >> well, this this case it's american dollars. but we're kuz using the accounting rules to move the money from one place to another. and apple through the research and development agreement moves this out of the company. it's true the logos are here. but many other companies the logos are offshore. so every time you buy "x" they take the profit and turn it into a tax deduction. the alchemists had it all wrong. >> there is a potential upside in this. it may take a long time to work this through. all the sort of gain that he's talking about applies to income taxes. corporations love incomes taxes. now as much as the congressman was sort of afraid on taking on apple strongly, the revenues

that we're talking about are overseas revenues. and the eurozone is in fact the biggest economy in the world. they have a big -- because of their unhappiness about how many companies don't pay taxes. there's a big tax initiative on. they're going through kind of a blue ribbon panel study phase. so it's going to take a while. but germany, france and the u.k. have all said they will act unilateral if there is no resolution they like. already unhappy about the tech company's policy on privacy. what happens if france puts in an upload tax? and that wouldn't be abdu-- if e going to have international cooperation. we have to have international tax, too. thank you. up next. the teachers who turned into lifesavers in oklahoma. our brave foot soldiers of the week. [ jackie ] it's just so frustrating...

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with the innovating and the transforming and the revolutionizing. it's enough to make you forget that you're flying five hundred miles an hour on a chair that just became a bed. you see, we're doing some changing of our own. ah, we can talk about it later. we're putting the wonder back into air travel, one innovation at a time. the new american is arriving.

nationwide the average full-time public teacher's salary is about $56,000 a year. in the state of oklahoma, the average starting salary for a public school teacher is just about 32,000. now, we already know teachers in this country are not treated with the reverence that they deserve. we count on our teachers to ensure that our children learn reading, writing, arithmetic, science, history. we count on our teachers to learn how to interact with each other. we count on them to enrich our children's understanding of the world around them. and in the face of disaster, be it natural or manmade, time and time again we count on our teachers to save our children's very lives. like rhonda crosswhite, a

six-grade teacher at plaza towers elementary, she put her students in a bathroom and draped her body over the students to protect them. one student kept saying, i love you, i love you, please don't die with me. and susan haylee, a teacher's aide who ushered first graders under the desks away from the windows. able to maintain focus on keeping the children calm and safe. also at briarwood was first grade teacher who used games and music to keep her children calm. she gave them instruments teean told them to sing as loud as they could. and then there was the amazing

story of anna kennedy and jessica simmons, to kindergarten teachers. anna and jessica had their kids get on their knees and cover their heads and then the two teachers covered the students with their bodies. when the first responders came in, they lifted a a car and under need found the two teachers and beneath anna and jessica. >> their students. everyone was still alive. practically unharmed. just a few scratches here and there. those are just a few of the names many young lives were saved in moore, oklahoma, as brave teachers used their own bodies to protect their own students from under their care, for being the every-day heroes who went above and beyond, risking limb, that's our show for today. thanks for watching. i'll see you tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. eastern. when we get into the right-wing litmus test in the swing state

of virginia. it's crazy town over there. now it's time for a preview of alex witt. >> why jersey shore may be a washout. and a new documentary on detroit. it went from the mecca city to the city of despair. and i'm talking with the nbc reporter who sat right across from her and talked about what it was like sitting in the same room with her asking some tough questions. and then in office politics, i talk to joy ann reid. don't go anywhere. i'll be right back. give me the skills that i needed to make one of those tech jobs mine. we teach cutting-edge engineering technology, computer information systems, networking and communications management -- the things that our students need to know in the world today. our country needs more college grads to help fill all the open technology jobs. to help meet that need, here at devry university,

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you should not start humira if you have any kind of infection. ask your doctor if humira can work for you. this is humira at work. open for business. the first test for the jersey shore since hurricane sandy but the memorial day weekend weather may not cooperate. in fact, there is snow, believe it or not, in the forecast. moment of impact? new video from the bridge

collapse. the incident raises serious questions about the infrastructure. how many bridges are at risk. and we'll talk to the reporter who interviewed jodi arias. did she seem reforceful. and celebrity court appearance that can be best described as bizarre. hello, everyone. welcome to "weekends with alex witt." two freight rains collided near the town of chaffee and brought down the overpass that the trains were traveling underneath. several people were injured. the other five wounded were traveling in cars on that overpass. of course, a week ago, two commuter trains collided in connecticut right at the height of rush hour. we'll keep you up to date on the developments there. in the meantime, the soggy start. a live look at a gloomy times square here in new york.