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tv   Up W Steve Kornacki  MSNBC  December 15, 2013 5:00am-7:01am PST

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that helps our members connect and share ideas to make smart business decisions. if you mess up, fess up. be your partners best partner. we built it for our members, but it's open for everyone. there's not one way to do something. no details too small. american express open forum. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. when a job or two jobs isn't enough to get an american worker out of poverty. >> i'm crystal ball filling in for steve kornacki who has the weekend off. as the midwest and east coast wake up after yesterday's big snowstorm, things are looking brighter and clearer this morning and we're hoping to get a clearer take on where a lot of things stand. the deadline for christmas shopping is counting down fast. i can feel my own stress levels
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rising and in just a moment, we'll be taking a look at the movement to secure living wages for workers at big box stores like walmart. plus, it was one of president obama's biggest campaign promises and one of the very first things he tried to fulfill. shutting down the detention center at guantanamo bay in cuba. as we all know, he's met fierce opposition in the five years since. we have new movement in the effort to end guantanamo to discuss this morning. did you read about the new york city girl profiled in the times this week? a girl they call the girl in the shadows. well, she got us all wondering about the hundreds of thousands of americans just like her who are also living in the shadows and what can and should be done for america's homeless. and there was encouraging news this week in the movement for equality when a new ceo was named at the head of general motors. will a woman at the top really affect the balance of power in the workplace? we have a lot of amazing and accomplished women joining us. so you'll want to stick around
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that. on friday, we got evidence that this year's unprecedented strikes by walmart and fast food workers in cities across the nation are having an impact on the president himself. >> there is some basic things we can do, just to create a better economic environment for these outstanding mayors. there are some areas, for example, raising the minimum wage, that could have a tremendous boost in a lot of the cities where there are a lot of service workers, who get up and, you know, do some of the critical work for all of us, every single day. but oftentimes still find themselves just barely above poverty or in some cases below poverty. >> in his most recent state of the union address, president obama called for raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour. but over the past year, folks like the men and women who clean the floors at burger king and stock the shelves at walmart have taken to the streets calling for $12 to $15 an hour. and the voters of seatac
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washington, home to the airport for seattle and tacoma and the 6,000 people would work there, they passed a referendum last month to raise their money mum wa wage to $15 an hour. federal minimum wage of $10.10, a dollar more than what he was proposing last year. public opinion is on his side and new nbc/"wall street journal" poll out this week found 63% of all americans support raising the minimum wage to $10.10. that includes half of all republicans, even half of all tea party members are in support of higher wages. while efforts to raise minimum wages seem to have momentum, workers face a tougher fight on another one of their demands, union representation. today we take it for granted
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that workers at mcdonald's and walmart and other places like that don't have a union. but it has not always been that way. you might have heard about the big wave of strikes throughout the 1930s that led to union station throughout the auto industry. retail clerks and waitresses and waiters, they were also winning union protection during that period. on february 27th, 1937, 100 female clerks at woolworth's five and dime location at downtown detroit staged a sit-in and were up against tough odds with cheap prices and more than 2,000 stores, woolworth's was the retail empire of its time. you can call it the walmart of the early 20th century. but the sales girls soon won better wages and union representation not only for themselv themselves, but all 40 woolworth stores across the city. by the beginning of the next decade, the labor movement had become so strong that strikes like the one at woolworth's were an every day occurrence. the president at the time knew
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that work stoppages could threaten the nation's capacity to manufacture all the uniforms and goods and weapons they would need to win the war. so he stepped up labor laws, he limited workers' ability to strike and forced business to settle their labor disputes amicableably. for most part, it worked. business and labor worked things out for the sake of the war effort. there was one ceo who would not play ball. his name was sewell avery, a staunch conservative who hated not only unions, but also fdr's entire new deal. sewell avery ran the company called montgomery ward, a retail giant, kind of an amazon of its day. if you lived in the middle of nowhere and needed an item, they would ship it to you from their mammoth catalog. and in cities, montgomery ward had stores. so when sewell avery refused to recognize his workers union it was a really big deal. these days when businesses tell
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unions to take a hike, well, that seems to be business as usual. not then. the full force of the u.s. government came down on sewell avery. roosevelt sent in the national guard whose soldiers carried him out of his office, in downtown chicago in 1944. the federal government's message to ceos across the country was clear, negotiate with your unions or else. after the war, sewell avery would exact revenge. with republicans in congress, he rolled back the union movement. in 1947, they succeeded big time. over the veto of president truman, republicans pushed through the taft/hartley act, a comprehensive bill that cut a broad range of union activity off at the knees. since the beginning of a long enralphing of federal labor law that weakened service sector unions in particular. as big box stores and malls spread out, union workers became even harder. fast-forward to today, one in 20
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retail workers is represented by a union. the laws protecting workers rights are so rarely enforced that more and more we're seeing workers taking to the streets. trying to win support from the public, from community leaders, from lawmaker, from anyone they can, they try to win back some of the power and protections they once had. i want to bring in josh barrow, politics editor for business insider, salasie at the national employment law project, theresa gellar duchet, at the new school, and richard wilson, employee working at a walmart in chicago for over two years, he's also a member of our walmart, an organization that supports workers there. and i should point out i've been talking with and working with some of the folks at richard's organization, our walmart. thank you for being here. i appreciate it. you braved the snow to be part of this conversation. that means a lot to me. theresa, i wanted to start with
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you, with kind of some of the history picking up on what we were just saying about the way unions used to be so strong in this country and really have a voice and be able to protect workers. as they kline declined, we have wages fall. how important is the decline of unions to the story of low wages? >> well, as a labor economist, i know that wage contours, wage levels are set and the economy, they're also set in politics and the law and legislation. so the lack of protection for unido u unions is instrumental in making the united states number one. sometimes it is not good to be number one. we are number one in the world in creating low wage jobs. one out of four workers in the united states is a low wage worker. meaning that they make 45% of the median wage, which is now $18,000 per year. so a quarter of our workers make $18,000 per year.
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and no other industrialized country has that kind of record. >> wow. >> greece, that is a mess, as we know, only 12% of their jobs are low wage jobs. some of the richest, fastest growing innovative countries like norway is at 5%. so we have created an environment where low wage jobs is the business model. >> one of the things i always look at is the graph that shows the way that productivity goes up, and it used to be as productivity went up, wages went up right along with it. and somewhere in the '70s, that became unhinged and also in the '70s is when we really started to see a decline in unionization. so, to me, it seems very closely intertwined. >> it is, actually. we all know this. also the big expansion of low wage jobs in china. so the unfettered, you know, trade with china has actually -- this import penetration causes low wages too.
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we went along with it. and many chinese employers are really just part of american companies. so it is not really chinese workers, it is american workers using those global supply chains. >> that's such a great distinction. well, like we were just talking about, since workers face such barriers to unionizing, we are seeing movements like our walmart that richard is involved with taking to the streets and trying to figure out with labor laws as they are how they can still have a voice. and i know you work with a lot of these types of organizations. what sort of models have been effective in providing workers with a voice in the absence of a union? >> we have seen union density decline from 35% in the 1950s, the amazing history lesson you just gave, to less than 30% today. we had to figure out -- workers had to figure out a way to organize. it is important to know that you don't have to be in a union to be able to organize and, you
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know, protest unfair labor conditions. you are protected. the problem is that there say big gulf between, you know, the theoretical right to organize and what happens when you actually do it in practice. because as i'm sure richard will tell us, you know, there are severe consequences for workers, especially in this economic climate, when they stand up and protest unfair labor conditions. and so the way that our walmart and fast food workers have been doing it over the last year, you know, these are growth industries in our economy as theresa was saying, these are the jobs that are growing, but these are the jobs that are paying single digit hourly wages. they have been doing it through a combination of just, you know, raising the profile of low wage work, who are low wage workers, they are adults, not teens, they are supporting families, they are working two jobs to get by. in fact, mcdonald's is telling them to work two jobs to get by. they're being forced to rely on public assistance to make ends meet.
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and so i think they have elevated this national conversation about low wage work and gotten president obama to even, you know, say, income inequality is a huge deal in this country. >> yeah. i think, richard, you and people like you have focused the conversation in this country. i have to say, personally how much i respect you and your courage. because you're out there thinking not just about yourself. but you're thinking about workers across the country and you're risking your own livelihood to do so. talk a little bit about what brought you to that point, where you decided, you know what, i'm not going to take this anymore. i'm going to go on strike. i'm going to engage in protests, i'm going to lift my voice to do whatever i can, both to better my situation and also the situation of workers across the country. what got you to that point? >> thank you so much. it is a pleasure being here this morning. my story is unique but it is the same as workers all around the whole world, around the whole
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u.s. it just -- we just -- just decided we want to have a better life. you know, that the age of low wage workers is over. it is a thing of the past. you can't survive in this economy making $8.25, $9.25, just things of that nature. you just can't survive. my personal story is i did the right things, i went to college, i got my degree, but -- >> in virginia, close to where i went to school. >> liberty university in virginia. i did the right things, but i owe my school, like, $3,000, i can't physically get my degree, so i physically have to be at walmart. and -- >> so you have all the credits you need, but because you can't pay the fees you need to graduate, you are unable to get your degree. >> exactly. >> oh, my gosh. because of things of that nature i have to be at walmart.
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and so now i'm a low wage worker. at our store in lakeview, it is not the same -- it is the same all over the whole country, workers are one of many who are sick and tired the way the home office is treating associates, cutting hours, making them work overtime, not getting paid unless it is company approved and taking extended lunches and things of that nature, just unfair practices. >> we heard reports that -- of what you would call wage theft, where people are pressured to work overtime, off the clock, right? and basically the message is, if you don't like your job here, if you're not willing to do those sorts of things, take a hike. we have a thousand other workers behind you ready to take that low wage job. we're going to pick up on that point and get josh barrow in this conversation as well right after this. [ female announcer ] we eased your back pain...
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last month, a few stores in washington, d.c., there was 600 job openings and 23,000 job applicants. >> if you look at that as a rate, that means less than 3% of them would get hired. harvard has a higher acceptance rate. >> yes. walmart is now harder to get into than harvard. though brown students want you to know they didn't want to go to either of them anyway. >> stephen colbert talking about the fact that in d.c. they had 600 open positions at a new walmart that just opened there and 23,000 applicants. richard, you got into a more exclusive institution than harvard. i want to pick up with a point that sadae and theresa touched on, the fact that service jobs,
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retail jobs are the jobs that we are creating in this country. they're the jobs that we have. so if we want to address income inequality, isn't the best way to address that, to make those jobs good jobs, to make those jobs that you can support yourself and your family on. to me that seems like the best way to go. >> that's right. question is how to do that. washington, d.c. provides an example. the city council considered a bill that would have effectively applied a special minimum wage just to walmart. it would have applied to certain other non-unionized big box retailers, but would the no hno applied to other supermarkets there. the mayor vetoed it. now they'll get a general minimum wage increase that applies to everybody. that makes more sense. retail say low margin business. walmart's profit is 3% of the sales. there isn't a ton of room to raise wages at walmart through reduced profits, though there
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would be some. the main way to have higher wages at walmart and other retailers would be to have higher prices. and that would be because it actually makes the workers more productive. the reason that low wage jobs are low wage is that, you know, a company like walmart does not make a lot of profit per employee. if you have higher prices, you'll have higher profits to support higher wages and higher consumer prices. i think that, you know, minimum wage increases are one of the policies that are available right now that do produce real standard of live increases for people who work at walmart and similar employers. i also think policies generally that support full employment will tend to push wages up. that's what we saw during the 1990s, the one period in the last 30 years when we had good wage growth across the entire income spectrum. i would caution against expecting that unionization will produce a lot of wage increases at retailers. it may produce benefits against other kinds of abuses by employers. the reason you got big wage increases in the auto industry
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from unionization was that there was a protected market where you had extreme profitability, competitor couldn't come in and undercut you on price at a period in the 1950s. >> so maybe more protectionist? >> protectionism would increase wages for certain kinds of workers who are competing with low wage workers in other countries. but in an open global market, which i think we have, like it or not, there is a limit to how much you can increase wages through bargaining. >> what do you say to that? >> not in retail. retail is -- in the united states is really low pay and other countries that do really, really well, in terms of growth and consumer demand, have much higher wages in retail sector. >> even retail stores in the u.s., if you lock ok at a place like costco, there is a model for the retail industry to pay much higher wages and walmart,
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as you know, richard was saying, during the break, made $17 billion in profits last year. i know you said that per employee, but, you know, there is obviously room in -- >> i want to address this -- what you said about how you have to raise prices a lot in order to increase wages. senator elizabeth warren actually spoke about this recently with regard to fast food and mcdonald's. let's take a listen to that. >> during my senate campaign, i ate a number 11 at mcdonald's many, many times a week. and i know the price on that one. $7.19. according to the data on the analysis of what would happen if we raised the minimum wage to $10.10 over three years, the price increase on that item would be about 4 cents. so instead of being $7.19, it would be $7.23.
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>> four-cent increase, doesn't seem like that big of a deal. richard, as our resident walmart ologist, you know a lot about walmart, do they have to raise prices a ton in order to pay people a decent wage? >> absolutely not. it was actually a survey done actually out that said that walmart, like, for example, last year walmart had $17 billion in sales. $17 billion in profit. $17 billion, that means after the bills are paid, after the bills are paid, and this is what you have left over. the walton family owns 100 -- they're worth $144 billion. that is 42% of the working population. >> the rest of america. >> the rest of america. the rest of america. and so where our walmart, our fight is very simple. walmart can play each employee a
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minimum of $25,000, that raises them out of the -- >> out of poverty. >> exactly. the question is that they choose not to. it is not that they can't. it has been actually said that walmart can actually pay employees $13 an hour if they raise per shopping experience, 64 cents. that's like ten groceries or something like that. >> i think most americans, if you put it to them like that, you know, would you pay 64 more cents a trip in order for folks like richard to have wages that are above the poverty level? and, by the way, to get a lot of folks off of food stamps, would you be willing to do that? a bet a lot of americans would say yes. we'll have more thoughts on this topic after this. dawn helps open something even bigger. [ all ] 3, 2, 1! this year, dawn is also donating $1 million. learn more at dawnsaveswildlife.com.
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are prone to infections, or have symptoms such as fever, fatigue, cough, or sores. 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. there was a time where raising the minimum wage was a bipartisan issue and we did it regularly to protect the hard working americans who couldn't keep up with the expenses of life. now it has become a partisan
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issue. >> if you raise the minimum wage too high, you'll have not more jobs, but fewer jobs and fewer opportunities for the young people because, again, about half the people who get the minimum wage are between 16 and 24. >> that was two senators there, arguing about the impact of the minimum wage. and sadae, one thing i think is a particularly compelling argument is when you have people earning $7.25, if they're supporting themselves, supporting themselves and family, they're not going to be able to do it on just $7.25. and we as a country said it is unacceptable for people to work and to live in abject poverty. we support them as taxpayers already through food stamps, through other forms of aid. >> vital programs, but -- >> which are vital programs, but, it seems to me that conservatives should be open to the argument that work should pay. >> yes. and if you -- what they were saying -- the last minimum wage increase was passed in 2007
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during the bush administration. this traditionally has been an issue that both republicans and democrats can get behind and you saw that with the amazing polling. but the problem is that we are in such gridlock in congress that, you know, we have only seen congress vote to raise minimum wage three times in the last 30 years. even though it is clear that it needs to happen and it is clear that every year that goes by we had a raise on the federal level, you know, purchasing power gets eroded and workers can't support themselves. and that's why we're seeing so much abjectivity. >> 52% of fast food workers enroll their families in public assistance program. that doesn't seem acceptable to me. >> almost all of them are getting earned income tax credit, that was expanded by the first president bush. >> just explain briefly what that is, for people that don't know. >> so many people watching this know because they're filing their income tax return and if their employer pays them too little, they get a credit -- a tax credit, a check from the federal government, from all
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other taxpayers. which means that -- walmart knows this, they keep their wages low and they know that the federal government, the taxpayers will fill in those wage gaps. so we are -- without a minimum wage or a union, raising the wages, we are actually just causing more and more money not to come from walmart, but to come from taxpayers to subsidize low wage workers. >> this is exactly what these policies were designed to do. the point of the earned income tax credit is to support -- >> to support employers with low wages. >> what do we do about the fact we had the economy, that for decades has been creating a gap in earnings driven by a gap in productivity that is widening. and so the -- >> it is actually on the rise. >> but not for retail workers. the reason these -- the reason that walmart jobs and similar jobs pay low wages is there are low profits per employee.
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in industries like this. and so if we're going to deal with the fact that we have this widening income gap, you need policies that are designed to support the incomes of people with low incomes. this is what obama care is also designed to do. >> right. >> you have a lot of workers who don't get health insurance through work, and the policy is designed to fill that gap. you can bemoan that fact, but i think there is good reason we have policy designed to -- >> to me, to me it is a question of -- from the conservative perspective, right, it seems to me you would rather have that coming from the market side rather than the government side. to me, this is another reason why unions which have been so demonized, right, by the right, are such a vital part of this conversation, because they bring a counterveiling force to the table, so there is more of a balance of power, between the workers who have a voice for themselves and the corporations who right now have all the cards, holding all the power. richard, i wanted to give you the last word on this topic
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because this is a discussion that directly impacts your life. i mean, what would it mean to you if you had wages that just allowed you to earn $25,000 a year. what are you on track to earn this year if you don't mind me asking? >> i'm track to earn $12,000 this year and i work average of 32 hours per week. >> are you able to live on your own on that kind of salary? >> absolutely not. if it wasn't for my grandmother, praise the lord. >> thank god for grandma, always. >> a couple of my goals is actually, like i said before, i feel in more ways that my american dream has been at least delayed or actually even stopped by this, by being able to work such lower wages. and i did everything right. i went to school, i studied, got the books, got the debt. but also make a long story short, what $25,000 would do for
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me, al allow me to pay off sal mae a lot quicker, get married, next year, hopefully. >> congratulations. >> thank you. and, you know, have my own family, get a house. just pretty much live the american dream. >> right. >> and i believe i can do that. that's why our fight is so important. i'm glad we're able to begin a process of change, the national discussion on wage labor and bring it from the back seat to the front seat at this time. >> i want to thank you so much, richard, for being here. i want to thank you, theresa. sadae and josh so much, for your part in this conversation. i think this challenge is a center of challenge of our time. we have these service jobs. they are the jobs that we have. and if we want to address income inequality, we have to find a way for people like richard to be able to support themselves and have good jobs. all right, switching gears, when staying put and going home are not an option, why five
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when is a handshake just a handshake? this impromptu meeting between president obama and cuban leader raul castro got everyone all in a tizzy. luckily jon stewart was around to provide a little bit of comedic context. >> obama had the audacity to greet another world leader. with a gesture so meaningless, you can train a basset hound to do it. raul castro isn't even fidel castro. he's like cuba's jim belushi, he's good. but he ain't john. and, by the way, cuba is not the only country with a spotty record of imprisoning people in cuba. >> turns out he's right. cuba is not the only country with the spotty record of
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imprisoning people in cuba. we will talk about that other country. that's next. [ female announcer ] we eased your back pain... ♪ ready or not. [ female announcer ] ...so you can be up there. here i come! [ female announcer ] ...down there, around there... and under there for him. tylenol® provides strong pain relief and won't irritate your stomach the way aleve® or even advil® can. but for everything we do, we know you do so much more. tylenol®. you can fill that box and pay one flat rate. how naughty was he? oh boy... [ male announcer ] fedex one rate. simple, flat rate shipping with the reliability of fedex. [ male announcer ] how could a luminous protein in jellyfish, impact life expectancy in the u.s., real estate in hong kong, and the optics industry in germany?
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the u.s. general who was in charge of opening the prison camp at the guantanamo bay naval base in cuba, he now says that it was a mistake. in an op-ed in the detroit free press, major general michael leonard writes the facility never should have been opened in the first place. in retrospect, in his opinion, the entire detention and interrogation strategy was wrong. he says it validates every negative perception about the u.s. let's face it, there are a lot of people out there who agree with general leonard, a lot of powerful people and his former commander in chief, he just happens to be one of them. the presidential candidate barack obama promised many times to close the prison at guantanamo bay. called the place a recruitment tool for terrorists. no surprise that on his second day in office, as one of the very first things he would do as president and as a symbol of how
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things would be different under this administration than the last, president obama signed an executive order that demanded the prison be closed within one year. when he accepted his nobel peace prize later that year, he talked about closing guantanamo. >> i believe the united states of america must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. that is what makes us different from those whom we fight. that is a source of our strength. that's why i prohibited torture. that is why i ordered the prison at guantanamo bay closed. >> just a few days after that speech, president obama asked the defense secretary and attorney general to get a prison in thompson, illinois, ready, so the u.s. would have somewhere to move all the detainees to -- once the facility in cuba was gone. that was the plan. as it worked out, not so much. lawmakers in congress do what they do best they freaked out and passed legislation to keep any federal money from being
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used to transfer guantanamo prisoners to the united states. as senator lindsey graham said, when one of those amendments was being debated, we don't want these crazy bastards brought here to the united states, they want to steal your way of life, not steal your car, have you lost your mind? also, making things just a touch more difficult, severe restrictions on sending prisoners back to their countries of origin, even those who have been cleared for release, but there are some signs of change, small ones, but signs of change nonetheless. just this week, the house and senate reaching agreement on a measure that would keep the prison there open, not allow transfers to the u.s., not allow the construction of new prisons in the u.s. to hold guantanamo detainees, but that would allow guantanamo prisoners to be transferred home to other countries if the u.s. no longer wanted to hold them. in other words, it is a good start. i want to bring in rashard robinson, executive director at color of change, an african-american advocacy group.
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josh gerstein with politico, adam serwer with msnbc.com who has been writing about the prison at guantanamo and wells dixon, senior staff attorney with the center for constitutional rights. thank you all so much for being here. adam, i was hoping i could start with you because you've been writing about this lately. and you just wrote this week that obama just got closer to closing gitmo. what you to me what do you mean by that? >> congress lifted transfer restriction, making it much more difficult for the administration to transfer detainees who some of whom as you said have been cleared for release, to third countries. and more than half of the detainees at gitmo are cleared for lease. what this means is that most of the population of gitmo can be more easily sent home. >> well -- >> or sent to a different country, not necessarily home. >> you have two options with the folks that are there. wells, i should let you lay this down. you have represented some of the
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prisoners who are being held at guantanamo. there is 162 people left there, detainees left there. who are they? why are they still there? what are our options for dealing with them? >> right, there are 162 people as you said, more than half of them have been approved for transfer. we have a huge number of people that the administration has already decided they don't want to keep. and so, i think if you look at the remaining population and you break down the numbers, you can see right away that -- that the overwhelming majority of people who remain are from the country of yemen. if the president of the united states wants to be a superstar on guantanamo and wants to regain some of the goodwill that was lost over guantanamo, he has to deal with the question of yemen. and i think that this new bipartisan agreement in congress will give him greater flexibility to do that. what he'll need to do is use
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that power in a sensible, smart way in order to transfer some of these men out. >> and, josh, you report on the white house. what is your sense of how committed the president is to expanding political capital to make this a reality? i don't think any of us doubt that this is something he cares about, that he really wants to do, was one of his first acts in office in 2008 that just hasn't gone the way he wanted it to. is he willing at this point to really champion the cause, mention it in the state of the union again, and put some political capital on the line to get it done? >> i think he's willing to expend some political capital. no question it is on his to do list on things he wished could happen in his first term that he hopes will happen in his second term. things went so badly off the rails in first term and so little effort by the white house, particularly from mid-2010 on. this just went completely under ground for them that i think you have to be a little bit skeptical when they say now we're making a huge full court
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press. they have done some things, put some new envoys in place, for example, they have done a few, a trickle of releases, some of which -- not necessarily happy about because of the way they were done. but there does seem to be an eagerness to get the ball ro rolling. when i've seen so far is not really a strategy to get you to that end state of closing it. >> and, rashad, i see you nodding your head. we should say on the other hand, the obama administration is very much behind this latest deal to make transferring prisoners easier to do and they also have supported being able to transfer them to the u.s. how do you see the president's efforts in this regard? >> like you said at the top, this is a good step. we want due process in this country. we want to believe that while we're being protected, and that that we'll be safe in our communities, we want to believe our government is not detaining people illegally, not giving
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people the opportunity to have a defense, to be able to stand in front of a court. and that -- these are the questions that i think the administration has to answer and will help us be safe all around the world. >> i think that's right. we'll continue this discussion. we have much more on the other side of this break. too soft. too tasty. [ both laugh ] [ male announcer ] introducing progresso's new creamy alfredo soup. inspired by perfection. and you work hard to get to the next level. it feels good when you reach point b, but you're not done. for you, "b" is not the end. capella university will take you further, because our competency-based curriculum gives you skills you can apply immediately, to move your career forward. to your point "c." capella university. start your journey at capella.edu.
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a good, viable strategy for what to do with terrorists who would work night and day to murder innocent americans, i have a hard time seeing how it is responsible to shut down our detention facilities and send these individuals home. >> texas senator ted cruz, this summer, making the case at a senate committee hearing to keep the prison at guantanamo open. and, adam, respond to mr. cruz, if you would, what is the strategy, what do we do with the
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people that are at guantanamo right now? >> i want to point out that mr. cruz referred to the detainees who want to kill americans. the truth is most of the guys have never seen the inside of a court, never convicted of -- >> ted cruz saying something that is not completely factually accurate, i'm falling over in my coffee. go ahead. >> it is -- i think -- i think as josh alluded to, this question of what to do with the detainees not cleared for transfer is not one that the white house has satisfactorily answered. civil rights groups have ideas of how they would like that to go down. part of the problem is while detainees have been cleared for transfer to third countries, we still have this almost irrational, supernatural fear that these detainees have super powers and they're going to burst out of prison and the incredible hulk and start chucking bricks. it is a very weird situation. >> yeah. and, i mean, wells, i think
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that's well put. we have a lot of very scary people in our super max prisons right now. we have ramzi yousef, ted kaczynski, zacarias moussaoui, all in super max prisons. we're good at keeping people in prison. this fear we have of holding even super scary terrorists which all the people in guantanamo are not, in prisons, it seems to me relatively unfounded. >> it is unfounded. i think that general leonard said it best in his recent editorial, when he acknowledged that guantanamo is opened because of anger and fear after 9/11. it is that fear that really underlies all issues related to guantanamo. it is that fear and it is what adam talked about with respect to the dehumanization of the men that has allowed guantanamo to continue to operate, even though almost no one thinks it really ought to continue to operate. it is why we, you know, it is
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why we're still arguing about whether detainees should be searched when they go to phone calls with their lawyers. and it is why the united states government is willing to send people to countries where they fear torture, because the lives of these men are just not valued in the same way as american lives. unfortunately. >> go ahead, rashad. >> in the high profile discussions we have, the fear is also an important tool in our discussions around military budgets. our discussions around war and where troops are going to go and our discussions and choices around whether we invest here at home or whether or not we're sort of, know, building up this military industrial complex. when we have these discussions around guantanamo, it is important to remember that it is not simply just about sort of whether or not we're going to transfer, you know, prisoners from one place to another, but it is about a larger conversation that we're having in this country. >> about who we are as americans, what we stand for. >> how fear is used to drive
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these discussions and drive decisions around where we place our resources. >> i think -- >> we're sitting here talking about cutting military pension and gitmo costs, you know, it is going to cost half a billion dollars a year to run. that's a sort of crazy situation to be in. >> yeah. and then the ted cruzes of the world say, yeah, but what is the cost of keeping our people safe. at a certain point, though, you have to say, we have to stand for our american values. and as michael leonard said in that op-ed, this is a recruitment tool, guantanamo bay is a recruitment tool for terrorists and it is in complete conflict with what we are supposed to stand for as a country. >> absolutely. the values are really important. the costs are important. the cost underscores the absurdity of continuing to operate guantanamo. the reason to close guantanamo is really the injustice. it is the terrible injustice that has been visited upon the men who are detained there. again, most of whom the
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government doesn't want to keep. >> but does closing and moving it to the united states really accomplish anything? i think we have to keep in mind why would we be closing it? if we're concerned that holding people indefinitely without charge is really what the problem is, that's what a lot of people around the world object to, i don't care what al qaeda objects to, but people overseas are concerned about that, just moving it to illinois or anywhere else doesn't address that issue. that is something that the president hasn't fully wrestled with. he said, do you want to hold people in perpetuity, but his policy they settled on in 2009 says four dozen of these men should be held in perpetuity. until that contradiction is resolved, that's part of why i don't see how we get to the final end state now. >> that's a good place to leave our conversation. i want to thank msnbc.com's adam serwer, wells dixon from the center of constitutional rights and politico's josh gerstein. an 11-year-old girl became one of most talked about people in america this week. we will talk about her and the thousands that are just like her. that's next. across america people are taking charge
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when it comes to budgeting your monthly expenses, there are general guidelines you're supposed to follow. the most basic of those general guidelines is trying not to budget more than a third of your take home pay on rent. you should not be shelling out more than a third of what is left over after taxes on keeping a roof over your head. that's the idea, anyway. the new study out this week reports more than 21 million households are paying at least 30% of their income and in many cases much more than that on shelter. that is the highest percentage on record. some people in families can't afford to do that, but many cannot. families facing those kinds of rent burdens tend to cut way back on other basic necessities, things like food and health care. lowest income households were said to shrink their food budge hes by $130 a month.
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people are hard pressed to save or afford to move or transition it a better job or get a better education. in some cities you can't help but spend more than 30%. ask folks in san francisco, fighting for some place to live in a tight, tight housing market amid a booming tech sector or ask just about anyone here in new york city. speaking of new york city, someone here who own his house announced this week that he is moving into city housing. at least temporarily for the next four years. on wednesday, new york city mayor elect bill diblazio came out of his modest row house in brooklyn to say and he and his family are headed to gracie mansion. it has a huge porch, a grand ballroom and recently underwent a $7 million renovation that included new floors, plumbing, lighting and ventilation and fanciful touches look a four post mahogany bed, 1820s chandelier and fake bamboo furniture, if that's your kind
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of thing. moving into gracie mansion is optional. mayor mike bloomberg chose to stay in his townhouse, using gracie mansion for official events only. but diblazio said -- another new yorker's reaction to gracie mansion caught our eye, though, this week. in fact, it is safe to say she probably charmed everyone who read about her. she's a young homeless girl named desani. when she and her classmates went on a field trip to gracie mansion, she kept looking for the mayor. she wants to see him up close this mysterious wizard of oz figures who makes decisions about her life from behind a curtain of political power. never occurs to her that the mayor does not live there. who could have a mansion and not live in it? she is just one of the 22,000 homeless children in new york city, 22,000 homeless children. nearly a third of whom are
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supported by a working adult. new york times reporter spent a year with disani and her family as they shared a room in a brooklyn homeless shelter down the river from gracie mansion and not far at all from where the mayor elect lives now. the shelter is the place where mold kreepz mold creeps up walls, where sexual predators have roamed and small children stand guard for their single mothers outside filthy showers. the article offered a glimpse into growing up without a home, and in many ways showed how hard it is to keep from getting crush under the weight of poverty, much less from getting out from under it. how exactly is any family supposed to get out from under that crushing poverty and get out on their own? here to discuss this, i with and to bring main rashad robinson,
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have josh barrow back, politics editor for business insider and mary brosnahan of coalition for the homeless. thank you for being here. mary, i want to start with you. this is your life's work. you focus on homelessness. talk to us about some of the things that have exacerbated homelessness in this city and what we can learn from that in terms of how to tackle homelessness nationwide. >> well, i think everyone was just appalled by what the times had on its front page all this week. andrea elliott has done in one felled swoop what many of us are trying to do for decades, show how grindingly difficult it is for a child to stay together, stay on track, and actually make something of themselvthemselvesn
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school. in new york city, since michael bloomberg took office, homelessness increased nearly 80%. in the mid-2005, he decided to cut off all access to federal resources to house homeless families. and you can see, since he did that, the numbers have just skyrocketed. new york city is unique in that we have a right to shelter. but mike bloomberg cut off all housing options for homeless families. so families like dasani's and others are trapped sometimes for years on end in unbelievable situations. >> i know you have seen situations like dasani up close. and watched the evolution of policy in new york city. what have you seen that are lessons that we should take? >> 15 years ago i did a spot insection of a homeless facility and it was as bad then as it is
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new. to show how little it has improved. i remember visiting and a woman who was pregnant, her water broken and no one knew it on the floor she was in. because people were so inattentive. mike bloomberg has a lot to be proud of as mayor, transportation and health care, but homelessness is not one of them. he's a bottom line business man. the metric here, as mary said, if homeless goes from 30 to 50,000, and a fifth of the city's children are poor, that's a measure of his manhattanization, wall policies that didn't to much about it. now, the series you referred to is fantastic. it ranks with the -- the last century, the willow brook series of about 30 years ago, which led to substantial changes in mental health policy. because of the coincidence, i don't know if it is a coincidence, of diblazio coming to city hall and wages being
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flat and no homes not being built this series now could be a spark to real change. >> i hope so. that's a very hopeful take and it certainly has gotten a lot of attention this week. and, rashad, i think part of the problem here is that we're talking literally about the powerless. we see the impact of things like voter i.d. laws across the country, these are the folks that are almost completely lost in our political process. even when we're talking about income inequality, there tends to be a focus on the middle class, which is critical, but we can't let people like the 600,000 homeless folks that we estimate to have in this country fall off the table. >> that's why the series is so important. there is a story being told from the popular culture in our media, to our news, local news that people get, that haves have done something to put themselves there and the have notes are there by their own choices and mistakes and there is not such a lie and so disconnected to the
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story of sort of the cuts to our social safety net, to the way the economy has worked and not worked, to the first segment that we had -- that you had today around low wage workers. and the opportunities for people to be able to work themselves into the middle class. this story that is being told and animates public policy and is exactly sort of where we're at where we're at with this homeless situation in the city and cities all across the country. >> it seems to me when you think about 600,000 people in this country which are homeless, which is a large number, right, but it also seems like a number that if we chose to politically, if we made this a priority, we could deal with it. it seems to me like a political choice that we do very little about it. >> yeah, i think it is a symptom of the broader dysfunction of the economy over the last few years. the economy is failing a lot of people. people can't find work. people have stagnating incomes
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and substantial number of people can't find homes. i think this -- i agree this is going to be a key challenge for the diblazio administration. i see two parts to it. a price challenge, in new york and san francisco, the fundamental reason housing is is expensive is there is tremendous demand for housing and it is difficult to add units. i think he will be friendly to construction, and allow the construction of more housing units which will address that supply side and then there will be targeted subsidies for people who can't afford housing. you have people like dasani's family where it is not just a price challenge, but you have social services needed. that is the more difficult thing. you can fix people not being able to afford housing with the right building policies and right amount of money. i think -- but when you have a family with, you know, with seven children and with, you know, drug problems in the family, and you have a number of
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things that need to be done in an integrated manner that are very difficult to get right. >> mary, i want you to pick up on that. homelessness exploded in the '80s under reagan era policies which exacerbated the situation. speak to what josh was saying about the need for sort of a suite of services when you're talking not just about wage challenges, not just about housing, rent, price challenges, but you are also dealing with sometimes mental illness, sometimes addiction. what is the best way to tackle these problems? >> actually, 600,000 number obviously that's not a monolithic group. there are different needs. keep in mind one of the things we learned over the past 20 or 30 years is that once a person is stably housed, it is much easier for them to get the help they need. so instead of -- this is one of the things that tripped up mike bloomberg, thinking people have to be fixed before they can get into housing where even the most severely mentally ill people, my husband used to work as an
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outreach worker, putting them into housing and work with them once they're stably housed and you'll see that their success rates are fantastic and recidivism back to homelessness is virtually nonexistent. housing is the cornerstone. >> mark, is that how you see things as well? >> it is especially bad in new york city where, like, the most congested city, small space, wages down, fewer jobs, very expensive to build housing whether it is affordable or low income, and so the new administration has a challenge. but there are precedent. mike bloomberg had a program called advantage where they gave subsidies to working homeless. half the people in homeless families have a parent who is working, but can't afford to do it. so those kind of subsidies started being diminished and cut back as you said krystal, under
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ronald reagan, he cut back federal funding there was wage stagnation at that time, and now the great recession is not something that happened in the 1700s. we are still feeling the after shocks, especially in new york. and so the new administration has a lot of ground to make up, but the precedent for doing something, if you want to have fewer dasanis, one last thing, while it was sad and shattering, it was inspiring. >> she's powerful. >> i'm not looking for a hollywood ending, but this is a young girl who is lithe, athletic, very bright. they chose her, i guess. it shows how her dire circumstances, no one is arguing for it, forced her to be resilient, creative and responsive. if she's in a good setting, this young girl, woman, will really flower. >> she could really flower. we'll have more out thoughts on how to make sure that the
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dasanis of the world flower right after this. ♪ [ male announcer ] you can't let a cold keep you up tonight. vicks nyquil -- powerful nighttime 6-symptom cold & flu relief. ♪ ♪ ♪
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rising inequality is bad for our democracy. ordinary folks can't write massive campaign checks or hire high price lobbyists and lawyers to secure policies that tilt the playing field in their favor at everyone else's expense. so people get the bad taste that the system's rigged. >> that was president obama talking about inequality has on political participation in this country. and, rashad, i think that the president, this is an issue that he deeply cares about. i think this is one of the reasons why he sought public office to start with, and it is
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something he wants to be part of his legacy. >> absolutely. i think this also shows us why the politics are so hard. why from everything from our campaign financing system to the polarization in our congress makes it so hard even when you have the most powerful man in the world not being able to push policies that are actually going to legitimately impact the lives of everyday people, and so uplift people who are in poverty. even throughout the campaign season, we constantly hear the conversation around protecting the middle class, when there is this whole other group of people who we never, ever see themselves in the middle class, don't see themselves as part of the middle class currently and are really struggling to get by. and need the type of lifelines that public policy and our government should be providing them. >> yeah. >> it is great that we're universalizing this subject, homelessness in new york, to what is happening to president obama. this is almost a paradigm shift.
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reagan runs and the problem is government, when he cuts back. and the republican party in washington, with austerity and sequestration, those are washington words. what it means is dasani. that's what happens down at the level of our children and poverty. when you combine the pope and his comments, he attacked trickle down economics. and it was like he was at a democratic convention. with president obama mirroring a century ago theodore roosevelt, the guilded era had high pay, low wages and it led to a tremendous shift in public policy. it could again given this confluence of after the great recession, a president who believes in government helping people in need as opposed to cutting their social services to help the economy. that makes no sense. >> and, josh, to that point, on sequestration, specifically, it is projected that by the end of
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2014, 125,000 people will lose their housing vouchers, that's the low end projection, the high end projection is 185,000, so to mark's point, that's fancy speak for more dasani's. >> i think if you look more broadly at the president's fiscal legacy, the big thing for the poor from the obama record is medicaid expansion. we have -- which goes to make medicaid into a comprehensive program that provides health insurance to essentially anybody who is poor in the united states, so long as their state has taken the medicaid expansion. i think there are -- there are issues on the discretionary spending side, which is what is controlled by the -- by sequestration, you have programs like housing vouchers, programs like the women and infant and children program that are impacted in there. the president's two big fiscal legacies are obamacare, which includes this expansion of the health care benefit for the poor, and a big change in tax policy where we have a top income tax rate, 4.5 points higher than when he took office.
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so the president really has changed policy in the united states in a way that taxes people more at the top and provide more benefits to people who are struggling in this economy. >> rashad, how do we tackle the problem of giving voice to the voiceless, of making sure folks like dasa inni and her family h a say in this political process. >> this is the moment for advocacy groups like mine and others who do work to amplify people's voices, to hold government officials accountable and to give this type of wind behind the back of fobs li sfol the president, and others, who want policy to happen, but around sequestration and debt ceiling issues, but in moments when we're facing big choices around whether or not we're going to cut from the social safety net and balance our budget on the most vulnerable, having the voices of the dasani front and center in the discussion and pushing them the same way the tea party is
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pushing other voices on the other side will be critically important. >> i think the work, you know, the new york times did in highlighting this family, i think, mark, to your point, has just been incredibly powerful and i hope does serve as an awakening and flashpoint for folks. mary, i want to give the last word to you. in terms of policies, nationwide policies, things we can do at the federal level, what should we be doing to combat homelessness in america? >> we know it works. that's the good news. section 8 is an absolutely fantastic program. showed that -- >> explain what section 8 is. >> a portable voucher. people are given the help they need to go out and rent in the private market, they -- >> don't have to be in a shelter like dasani. >> unlike advantage, it is much more long-term. but we need more leadership. we need to hear the voices. but in washington, just saying, why aren't -- why isn't the -- why isn't most of the sequestration cuts coming from
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the defense budget, for instance, as opposed to cutting off hope for hundreds of thousands of americans. >> yeah. >> that's the pivot point. >> i think that's so true. and one of the things that has been really frustrating to watch in terms of the conversation around sequestration and the way things unfolded, oh, the sky didn't fall, sequestration, it is no big deal, it is not really having a big impact when, you know, you can see in dasani and other families across the country it is certainly having an impact for them. all right, wasn't to thank josh barrow with business rashad robinson and former new york city advocate mark green for a great conversation. thank you, all. shifting gears, we learned this week that a woman will be taking command of one of america's biggest companies. one of the big three automakers, no less. but that doesn't
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this is humira at work. it is june, 1963, you are a woman, presuming -- presumably working for a man. and the news of the day suggests your paycheck may start to look a little different than it did before. so you bring it up with your boss, maybe something like this. >> i don't know if you read in the paper, but they passed a law where women who do the same work as men will get paid the same thing. equal pay. >> what exactly is peggy from "madmen" referring to, the equal pay act of 1963. and although it sounds like something that achieves full equality, well, it hasn't quite lived up to expectations. we'll talk about the peggys of 2013 next. i'm nick, and i want to show you
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this week it was announced that general motors has a new ceo and her name is mary barra.
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if you're wondering, yes, she's the first woman ceo ever in the auto industry, which is in and of itself undeniably awesome news. the news was met with glowing headlines. first woman car chief, breaking glass ceilings, a company woman. even though this is tremendous news, very important company, we should not let it obscure the biggest picture of how far women still have to climb in the business world. mary barra becomes the 23rd ceo to currently run a fortune 500 company, the total number of ceos at only 23 out of the whole fortune 500, that's only 4.5%. more work to do indeed. in board rooms, the number of corporate directors is only around 16%. which is better, but still not close to 50%. the pay gap has started to narrow in recent decades according to q research. young women starting out their career are now making 93 cents for every dollar a man makes. that doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you consider that more of those women have
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four-year college degrees than male counterparts do. they also expect the pay gap to widen over the course of their careers, as they begin to have children, and start to juggle the demands of work and family. over half of working mothers say being a parent made it more difficult to advance in their careers. the men who father children, well, only 16% of them say it is presented any career obstacles. mary barra's new job is fabulous news. congratulations, welcome to the boys club. i want to open the discussion now to the question of how much one ceo really equals when it comes to workplace equality and how much work we still have to do. here to discuss this are christie hefner, former chairman and ceo of playboy enterprises, she was the longest serving female ceo of any publicly traded company, she's now the executive chairman of canyon ranch enterprises. chairwoman, i should say. and the honorable elaine chow, former secretary of labor under president george h.w. bush.
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and also president of united way and director at the peace corps. we also have rachel sklar, founder of the list, a web community supporting women in technology. also a founding editor at both huffington post and mediaite. got to pick a bone with you on mediaite. >> nothing at all. >> this young lady right here, who you may have seen before, melissa harris perry, host of msnbc's "melissa harris perry" on right after this show at 10:00 a.m. eastern time. welcome, all of you. i've been so excited about this panel. thank you so much for braving the snow and copping oming out to me. i have a new ceo at gm, mission accomplished, we're all set! don't have to worry about it anymore. this is a thing i always push back on, the feeling of mission accomplished, we have one person. the fact is that there are -- there can be more than just one. it was written how there are
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many men with lots of personalities and one woman, the woman version of the man's thing. and i think that this is, as you said, amazing news, but it is interesting to note that the two previous ceos were people who came in from either industries, mary barra has been a gm lifer, her father was a gm lifer, spent her entire life gearing up for this position. so, you know, i mean, this is the woman that was able to ascend. she had absolutely -- to use a car phrase, they kicked the tires on her, right? i think to get to point where a woman can be in the same position as men when the tires get kicked and there is still a ways to go there. >> christie, speak to this, one thing people may not realize about you, by the time you left playboy, 40% of your executives were women, which is a phenomenal percentage. why is it so important to have women executives to have women in the board room? >> i think one of the things that is important, which is why
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i think we have to be careful phrasing the whole conversation is if it was just around do it because it is a good thing to do, it is a smart thing to do. it is a competitiveness issue. we actually lost ground in this country in terms of both the number of women in the workplace, the number of women in executive offices, the number of women in legislatures compared to other countries in the last 20 years, and partly i think that's because of what pew poll shows, the lack of flexibility in some of our rules and laws that haven't caught up with the fact that now over 70% of children are growing up in families where either there are two working parents or a single mother. and a lot of our institutions are predicated on the old idea of madmen where in the main, women were stay at home moms. >> right. secretary chao, it is smart business to have more women in the board room to have more female executives, companies that have more female executives do bet they ter, they succeed, e
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more profitable than companies that don't. >> it is wonderful that gm picked this person who is go to be such a trend setter and an inspiration to so many. i would say bravo, of course. and bravo to the excellent example that the board has now set for the rest of the nation, in choosing her. then bravo also to the inspiration that will certainly result to millions and millions of people throughout not only this country, but throughout the world as well. i think what is interesting to note, as you talk about these statistics, about women, and wages and their life long earnings, you note that marys with a lifer. she was a life long general motors employee who did not take breaks for her -- raising her family or anything. so when a woman starts out her career -- or as anyone starts out their career, what really helps with long time wage increases and promotion prospects, if there is continuity of service. so what has happened is mary has -- she has been a --
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she's -- there has not been breaks in her career. >> my question about that, though, yes, that's important. that's really important to note. >> that's going to change, i think. it is a reflection. >> yeah. >> it is a reflection how that -- that was the rule. those are the rules of the game and she played by the rules. >> and the question is, right, you want to play by the rules and want to do -- acknowledge the realities of the world that we live in. but you also, melissa, want to have some part in shifting the rules. so that women have more of an opportunity to, you know, have a family, like we do. and be able to balance and if they need to, take some time and still be able to come back into a career so that not only does that woman benefit, but the entire country benefits from having the human capital of that woman fully employed. >> so many interesting things laid on the table at this point, one is a question about just sort of -- our schematic reference, who we think a ceo
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is, so when we say the ceo or the doctor or the president, can we imagine in that moment a woman holding those roles? i think you are right about -- the idea that if -- when women hold these roles, perhaps more than any other single thing they do is to change our perceptual world. we have to be careful about the perceptual world and who needs to shift. i think it is less about inspiring young girls to think they can be ceos than it is shifting the ideas of board members that they should, you know, think of the women who are coming through. that said, then, that point about worker longevity, and the need for worker longevity to be one part of rising to leadership within a corporation, i think that says something about workers in general. certainly about women, but also about the changing american workforce, which rarely provides those sorts of opportunities anymore, especially for people who are the primary or only breadwinner in their family, which increasingly women are,
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and that that idea that you can come out of school, get a job, stick with the job for the next 30 years, that isn't what american work looks like anymore. if it doesn't, does that mean then women will not have the opportunities to climb into leadership. >> there is a school of thought, in fact, that more than the one career at one company mold of, say, our grandparents generation, that it is going to be a gig economy. you're going to kind of create your own gigs along the way. which is why things like the portability of health care becomes so critical, and it is why i think a lot of the focus is on making sure women have a fair shot, you know. do they have the opportunity to achieve their potential. >> do they have the tools with cha which to do so? women are less likely to negotiate on their way in. so right away they're set up to make less, as they go forward, because nobody is telling them, gee, you should be negotiating. this year, in the 2013, the year of lean in, now we're all getting the message, women should negotiate for themselves,
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they should be aware of their market value and that they should be prepared to earn it and be given it or look out for it. >> and both workers in america, male and female, are now working at low wage jobs in which there is no opportunity for negotiation and they may not even have labor organizing rights to collectively -- >> they're already leaning in. >> right. they're leaning in as far as they can go. i want to come back to one point, krystal, around the ability of women to do work and to have family. something that men have typically not had to question. and, you know, as you saw there, women see it as problematic, men do not. but typically our domestic value ends up devalue to almost nothingness within sort of our idea about what women produce in the world, so the work we do domestically isn't considered very valuable. because of that, the women who we then end up paying to do our domestic work in the work world so in other words, everything from cleaning the home to caring for small children is extremely devalued, low paid work. for those women who are then
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raising their own children, all of that is depressed. in part because men aren't the ones who are doing that. >> as we have seen, women moving in to more male dominated professions, we have not seen men moving in to traditionally female dominated professions like you're pointing to, melissa. i want to pick up on that thought and get to much, much more right after this short break. [ male announcer ] how could switchgrass in argentina, change engineering in dubai, aluminum production in south africa, and the aerospace industry in the u.s.? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy. it's just one reason over 70% of our mutual funds beat their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment information, risks, fees and expenses to read and consider carefully before investing. and you work hard to get to the next level. it feels good when you reach point b,
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♪ 4 actual tree houses ♪ 3 blackouts ♪ 2 weird to mention ♪ and a roaming horde of carolers ♪ ♪ with my exact same route [ female announcer ] no one delivers the holidays like the u.s. postal service. priority mail flat rate is more reliable than ever. and with improved tracking up to 11 scans you can even watch us get it there. and look for our limited edition holiday stamps. you know, some advocates argue that the reason that they have women more involved in leadership positions is they're gentler and kinder. i've never found that to be the case. they're as tough, they're as strong, they're as everything as a man is and vice versa. but the important thing that is different is just like men, they bring a different perspective. >> indeed. vice president joe biden earlier this month speaking about women, while overseas. i have a very tough panel of women gathered here today. and, christie, i wanted to ask you about there was this photo that came out, i think last
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year, of the president's team in his office. and it was all men. except for valerie jarrett's leg, which is there. and then there was another photo more recently of the healthcare.gov war room. you see a technical team there and it is a room full, as far as we can see, all men except for the one woman right there up front. and in some ways this photo is the one that is more troubling. because tech jobs are the knowledge jobs, the well paying jobs, in our society now. we have got to get more women to embrace technology. >> well, i absolutely gagree. i think it is one of the interesting parts of mary's story. she was an engineer. and this whole push to get more women interested in what are called the stem subjects, science, technology, engineering and math. i think it is critical and not just if you're going into a business like the manufacturing of cars, because technology is
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influencing every kind of business, every company is becoming a technology company. and women need to be fluent in and comfortable with technology if they're going to be successful. >> what is the barrier there? >> well, two things. first, you're correct, that we do need to encourage women and girls to go into tech and to embrace stem. and there are a lot of great organizations doing that. we are getting there. but i would push back a little bit on the definition of women in tech because actually tech is now a huge industry, it overlaps with every industry. and there is a much more narrow definition of who gets to be a woman in tech, literally an engineer, a coder, versus men who tend to occupy a lot of tech positions across all these industries. and nobody questions it. i think that my push is always
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to look at similarly situated men, similarly situated women, let them have equal opportunity. we're still far from that. that's where i turn to. >> that's been one of your sort of missions is to make sure, you know, you see the panel, right, talking about new technology, and it is all men. and saying, you know, couldn't you have found at least one woman who is qualified to be on this panel, right? >> it is a question of -- like saying, well there must be five things in the world because that's all i see. it behooves everyone for their bottom line to have a better product, to have more diversity across the board. i agree with joe biden there, who wouldn't agree with joe biden. >> secretary chao, one challenge we touched on before is the fact that young women now, they're doing pretty well relative to their male peers, earning more college degrees, outearning a lot of male peers and that flips once they have children.
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and in the u.s., we're basically alone in the world in the fact that we do not guarantee paid maternal leave. the other company we have is papua new guinea, lesotho and swazila swaziland, not the company that we nrmormally keep. why is there opposition to getting us to the level of the rest of the world? >> can i mackke a comment about the picture, the guys in the room doing the website. you'll notice that the website doesn't work very well. i'm not sure that was a great commentary of all these people. sorry about that. >> this is the tech surge, maybe. this is the fix. they're dong a much bing a much. >> on christie's point about stem, you are also right in saying that tech is not just the coders. it is also the people who are using it. people are now tweeting, doing -- sending all sorts of messages, they're using technology in different ways. and certainly the women
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participation part in that is very high. but what is of note is that two things about mary's career, one is that as i mentioned, she has spent all her life, you know, in general motors. and that longevity of service was critical to her advancement. now, the world is changing. so the companies are changing. employers start changing in response to the changing demands of the workforce. i'm actually quite optimistic. what we should be having in terms of public policy are actually flextime and compensatory time. that actually is not allowed in the private sector where as some of that is allowed in the public sector. so there has to be much more flexible work policies for a more mobile, more flexible workforce. >> which will benefit women and men. >> i do want to just point out, i just don't want to miss this, you asked the question about paid maternity leave. not only do we not have paid maternity leave, but precisely at the same moment that these
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employment trends are occurring around questions of gender, as you indicated. more women with college educations, not only are we not sort of expanding the capacity of women to make choices about their reproductive lives and family lives, we're actually limiting them. so at precisely the same time, state legislature across the country are limiting the capacity of women to make family planning choices in everything from the availability of birth control to the coverage, even of -- in private insurance as we saw in michigan this week, of termination services. so i recognize that all those family planning are very broad issues, but we typically don't end up talking about them in a moment like this, which we should, which is women's economic lives. we talk about them exclusively as they're social issues as opposed to economic issues for women. i don't think it is an accident that women's economic empowerment is going hand and hand with a reduction of women's reproductive choices. >> single biggest factor. >> in response to the question, there is actually now a majority
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of support for paid family medical leave. prentd presents a way for the united states to get in step with other countries. >> the problem is -- it gets us to the level of the rest of the planet, but even though it was introduced and even though there is broad bipartisan support across the country for it, it is not looking like it is going to pass in congress. why -- >> it is going to pass in congress. >> why is it so -- is that -- >> i'm not so sure all the women senators support this. i think it is important to understand the economic impacts of some of the policies.
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you know, we want, of course, economic empowerment of women, but we want also an overall, healthy, vibrant economy. >> sure, but i -- >> we do not want to put all the burdens on the employer. the economy is still fragile. we have unemployment of 7%. we have a low labor participation rate. i think employers should not be handed out more regulatory requirements. >> we're missing out if we don't have women in the workplace using their full potential. and the rest of the world does this and their companies -- >> even beyond that, after a very successful bills in california and new jersey, this is not -- >> this is .2% contribution weekly by the employer and the employee. this is an earned benefit. this is the best kind of policy
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that helps employers and employees and is not some government entitlement program. this is exactly what we should be doing. >> absolutely. i think that's -- that's where we have to end, unfortunately, there is a lot more to say on this topic. we will be back with some final thoughts right after this. the n. open to innovation. open to ambition. open to bold ideas. that's why new york has a new plan -- dozens of tax free zones all across the state. move here, expand here, or start a new business here and pay no taxes for ten years... we're new york. if there's something that creates more jobs, and grows more businesses... we're open to it. start a tax-free business at startup-ny.com. in the nation, what's precious to you is precious to us. ♪ love is strange so when coverage really counts, count on nationwide insurance. we put members first. join the nation. ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪
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i want to find out what my guests think we should know. let's start with you, rachael. >> i think that everybody should watch for some really smart writing this week about the new beyonce album. there is a lot in there, a lot to unpack. one of the hardest working women in the nation. >> indeed. >> and she makes a lot of good, interesting commentary on women. >> she is a very talented woman on many levels. christie? >> i think the this discussion we're having about what are the right programs and policies to support women in the workforce is going to continue and this idea of paid family medical leave is one of those issues that i think could be led on a bipartisan basis by women in congress, and we could actually
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see action on that. >> we'll be hopeful for that. >> secretary chow? >> good news is congress will be out next week. the defense authorization bill will pass, and the budget will pass, and everyone will go home and enjoy the holidays, hopefully. >> a little bit of regular order. all right, i want to thank all of our guests today. thanks to rachel sklar, melissa harris-perry who is off getting ready for her own show, secretary elaine chow. thank you for joining us and letting me sit in this weekend. it has been a pleasure and an honor. steve will be back with more "up" saturday and sunday. i'm sure he has missed all of you at home very much. but next is melissa harris-perry. the boehner backlash, at last, the speaker speaks and he is not mincing words. then again, neither are those he is criticizing. it's a good old-fashioned gop holiday squabble. also, seven new billionaires sign on to the giving pledge. what to do with tall that money. stick around, melissa's next.
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one week? that's just my speed. rapid wrinkle repair. and for dark spots rapid tone repair. from neutrogena®. this morning, my question. how hard can it be to give away $1 billion? plus, the human cost of surviving our nation's gun battles and the legendary poet, nicky giovanni is here in nerdland. but first, john boehner's message to the ultra right wing, i'm just not that into you. good morning, i'm melissa harris-perry. this week, believe it or not, we learned something very, very important. house speaker john boehner can display an emotion that is

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