and no group of attractive people playing roles on tv commercials can bring this party back to life. okay. that does it for "the cycle". "now with alex wagner" starts now. it's officially the last day of winter, and chris christie would love to leave the season of his discontent behind. it is wednesday, march 19th, and this is "now." ♪ >> reminded of the peanuts character, pigpen, you know, he has that cloud of dust around him. in some ways thash is what chris christie is facing. >> christie dragnet keeps getting bigger. >> trying to move past the controversy. >> these are supposed to be friendly territory for him. >> listen, i -- i write, i don't need to read your budget statement. >> the biggest problem, might be about his guide to port

authority. >> prosecutors subpoenaed david sampson. >> new jersey governor chris christie doing his other job, fundraising in michigan. >> the candidates he's supposed to be raising funds for wouldn't show up. >> a lesson in crowning someone too early as the front-runner. >> a god awful winter, that i wish would end yesterday. ♪ getting back to boisterous. chris christie is on the road raising money for the republican governors association. christie's off to michigan hoping to reprise his role as the rga's million dollar man. despite the swirling controversies of bridgegate, hurricane sandy assistance and beyond, christie's managed to pick up $1 million or more in chicago, boston, texas in last couple of months breaking a $6 million fund-raising record in january. besides offering a breather for the embattled governor, it may be the fund-raising whirlwind

and blankets of cold, hard cash are warming the cockles of christie's heart, and bolstering his confidence. wait. chris christie's been shaken? for the second time in a week, the governor faced throngs of hecklers at a town hall meeting yesterday in south river and for the second time, he had them bounce from the venue. the protesters revealed themselves to be rutgers university students who are angry at an alleged misuse of hurricane sandy assist taps funds. so how did chris christie deal with them? prepared with preemptive union bashing. >> the state workers union has decided that one of their goals and missions in life is to recruit people to come here to the town hall meeting and when you begin to ask questions, they will stand up and start screaming and yelling over you and over me. the folks who want more and higher taxes from you, so they can get bigger raises and more

benefits, and bigger pensions. >> in christie land, what is the best way to strip your opponents of legitimacy? accuse them of being disgruntled union laborers even if they have nothing to do with labor unions. unions equal bad, rowdy, no good getting bounced from the christie venue. it was the exchange over the affordable care act that showed them the knock em, sock em of yor. >> to misinform people pause you have an agenda is incorrect. >> we have a budget statement. we will be happy do share with you. >> i write the budget, i don't need to read your budget statement. i write the budget. medicaid has been expanded in the state. i'm sorry you favor obamacare and you do not. sorry, that's the way it goes. >> that's just the way it goes, when chris christie doesn't like your question and does not want to answer it. joining me now, "time's" editor

at large, mark halperin. mark, let me start with you, christie tape, that could have been old christie tape, but it's new christie tape. the attitude and the bullishness, if not the downright bullying behavior, back on display. did you think it's high time we see this chris christie return to main stage or amid the swirl of allegations he should have a more consolatory tone? >> that's the way it goes. i've got nothing else to say. >> sorry you're a fan of obamacare. >> he's doing what he needs to do, he needs to be himself. you know, it is now cliche to say, he's one e-mail or text away fromming having bigger problems than ever with this story until and unless something comes up that makes the story worse. it's going to get worse. we know it's going to get other people around him. but until that time, until we see subpoenas, grand jury, open testimony he has no choice but

to fundraise for the rga, hold town meetings with his own style and hope people like that. not if he wants to run for president but govern the state. that is his style. he cannot be a different person to effectively govern. >> the dearth, the rutgers students are one thing, and that is sort of it's amazing it's taken this long to have boisterous protester in the hall, the fact that no one has asked him a substantive question about this stuff, again, i ask you, as a reporter in new jersey, how is it possible at this late a date? by the way, there are new allegations and new angles in this investigation every day. so it's not like there's not fodder for the furnace, if you will. >> yeah, i think these town halls are a fairly self-selecting crowd of people. middle of the day, either older crowd or people take time off of work to talk to him, hear what he has to say. you go to a town hall, take your day off of work, are you going to heckle him over bridgegate or ask why your house is not fixed

after hurricane sandy a year and a half ago? he made the statement, he said it tersely, people have a real concern. i think there's a point to that, and they come to these things for a purpose, not heckle the governor. so, you know, i think -- >> every day i get into in-box the schedule of the governor and lieutenant governor, regularly before all of this started, one of them would have a press availability, most days, not every day, but many days. neither of them has had a press availability. citizens can ask whatever they want was reporters have legitimate questions. when travels not accessible to the press. in state every day i hope there's one day press availabili availability. but that's where the questions -- that's where he is not -- reporters have a lot of questions and i'm surprised the reporters who cover him daily haven't been raising more of an issue of that. they deserve an availability on other issues. it clear he's not having them

because he doesn't want to talk about this, there remember other issues. >> chris smith makes this point, the longer he avoids any press, local, national, the more it seems like he has something to hide. talk about the rga visits, he's coming in through the back door for the fund-raiser they went to in florida. he's not sort of being carried in on a devaughn on the shoulders of his colleagues. these are sort of sneaky, behind doors, closed doors fund-raisers where he's not accessible. >> rga fund-raisers are often that way. it's the fact that in new jersey he was extraordinarily accessible before, and now he's not. >> each to you guys. even to the national television med media, he was a fixture on these shows. i don't think he's been here in a while either. >> alec mcgillis, has done fine reporting on the subject of chris christie, what has happened in his administration talks about the extreme yet

comically ham-handed efforts on a part of the christie administration to keep secret the selection process of the stronger than the storm ads that were all about sort of touting how much new jersey has been rebuilt ins the storm. the administration give $ 4.7 million to one firm, a higher bid than the next bid which was for $2.5 million. and mcgillis suggests the person in charge of all of this, michelle brownie, a close christie confidante and aide, was inclined to give highered by to mmw because their ads featured chris christie and if you're lation the groundwork for 2016 presidential bid were fairly good at proposing chris christie was a miraculous, great governor. >> and the election in november. new things in the story i hadn't heard before, but, yeah, they were able to get a hold after

all of the scoresheets and mww scored better -- >> in the selection process. >> exactly. scored better than the other firm. the woman who runs the other firm, sigma group, made the allegation, which i had not heard before that mww walked in with a full proposal. >> they had apps. >> video game, app and she had just the basic. i interviewed her some time ago, i didn't talk about this then, but said they were fully prepared almost as if think had a head start. who knows? it's a big firm, could have had people working around the clock to get this done. she sort of said it seemed to her there was ahood tart on this thing. who knows? >> there is the shadiness that michelle brown gave, i believe, a score on scale of 1,000, the possible out of 1,000, michelle brown gave 970, average score

was 953, soviet eastern bloc style, mark halperin. the fact that the christie administration redacted the names of a lot of these folks, administration officials who gave out the bid. this is usual lay fairly transparent process, talking about ads, state recovery here. >> two things, one on each side. ads were pretty good. >> what? >> it wasn't like they bought a sham product. ads were given, i thought, and lot of governors put themselves in ads in the election year. on the other hand the article makes the accusation the process did not have the normal level of transparency. i don't know as a factual matter if it's true. if is true, it raises questions. what was true before the scandal broke, governor christie and his associates ran the state their way and it was effective politically and he thrived as the governor of the state. but running things your way when

you get scrutiny in the port authority is the best example of this, done hold up the way it did when there wasn't a lot of scrutiny. >> on the notion the port authority or hurricane sandy funds used as a carrot or stick to reward or punish various people and organizations makes people uncomfortable, if that is what happened. all i know, daryl, i could -- i could turn in a 2.5 million bid and get apps if i had mark halperin help me write the digital cold. >> as long as no one cuts my hair, the source of my strength. >> you're bringing in david sampson. earn's confused. more online about what mark halperin was talking about. >> go to twitter. >> go to mark halperin's twitter feed. what a plug. >> thank you both for your time. coming up in the summer of 2009, three americans went for a hike near the iranian border. what followed was excruciating

imprisonment and confinement. shane bauer, joshua fatal and shara shore discuss their story in their new book. as the mystery closes in on two weeks, the fbi joins the investigation into malaysian airlines flight 370.

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the lottest in the investigation of flight 370. malaysian authorities asked the fbi to assist them to recover data from the flight simulator taken from the home of captain zaharie amad shaw. authorities have given the fbi copies of the hard drive of the captain and first officer hamid.

then creased focus on the pilots comes after yesterday's news the westward turn away from beijing had been preprogrammed into the cockpit computer system, prior to their last radio contact with air traffic control. the endless stream of conflicting and oftentimes confusing revelations combined with a seemingly dwindling ability to locate flight 370, an effort now in its 13th day. all of that is taking an increasingly heavy toll on the families of the passengers of flight 370. this morning's daily press briefing became a chaotic, emotionally charged scene as furious relatives accused malaysian authorities of withholding information and one woman was dragged from the proceedings. others meanwhile have questioned whether investigators have done all they can in coordinating international search effort of unprecedented scale. that is something u.s. attorney general eric holder addressed a few hours ago.

>> we are working with the authorities in malaysia, trying to offer whatever assistance that we can. but at this point, i don't think we have any theories that i could propound. >> coming up, not getting what your paid? not getting paid what you do? quit whining, that is the gop's message to female workers and female voters and they are not backing down. that's coming up ahead. first, has mcdonald's been stealing from its employees? new york attorney general eric schneiderman joins me to talk wage theft under the golden arches next on "now." are you still sleeping? just wanted to check and make sure that we were on schedule.

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has galvanized people across the country, including men and women who work in fast food chains and see,ing $15 an hour. what about the minimum wage labors who aren't even being paid what they have already legally earned? yesterday, new york attorney general ericschneiderman announced $500,000 settlement with the only of seven mcdonald's franchises, accused of engaging in wage theft of 1600 workers. a survey last year found that 84% of fast food workers in new york city, 84%, victims of wage theft. 36% required to work off the left. mcdonald's franchise owner, a man who failed to pay his employees for the work they did after hours, who didn't reimburse workers for the cost of laundering their uniforms and made employees pay any character register shortfalls out of their pockets, all that in tuesday's settlement. other common forms of wage

theft, denying employees meal breaks noshth pt paying for ove not giving them their last paycheck and not paying at all. employees protested in 30 cities a week after mcdonald's hit with seven class-action lawsuits in flee states, california, michigan, new york. all lawsuits allege that the golden arches a its franchisees engaged in wage theft. mcdonald's and our independent owner/operators share a concerned and commitment to the well-being and fair treatment of all people who work in mcdonald's restaurants. we are currently reviewing allegations in the lawsuit and will take necessary actions as they apply to our respective organizations. joining me now, new york attorney general, eric schneiderman. always a pleasure and honor to have you on the show, especially on the heels of this, more good for people who think minimum wage workers need a fair shake.

i was staggered by the statistic up to 84% of workers, fast food workers report wage theft has something that happened to them. why are we hearing about this now? >> what's happened, workers, fast food workers and others, have found their voice, and these are folks that traditionally, a lot of folks in the labor movement thought you can't organize these people, they're too vulnerable. they found their voice. sciu, mary kay henry have thrown down on the fast food workers and are backing them up and they are coming forward in numbers that are staggering. we settled two weeks ago, got back wage over 1,000 car work washers. yesterday announced 1600 mcdonald's workers, finding their voice, getting support from unions and becoming a powerful force in reviving essential american efforts to do something about inequality. everybody talks about

inequality. one way to deal with it, deal with it the minimum wage and make sure people pay. in new york 7.25 an hour. these guys were beating worker united states of 7.25 an hour. it's the most mean-spirited thing you can imagine. >> mcdonald's is making millions in profit. my question as an attorney, what is mcdonald's, the brand, the corporation, what is their responsibility here because the suits are against franchise owners. how much should mcdonald's reasonably expect to -- reasonably be expected to oversee operations at each one of the locations? >> mcdonald's has involvement with their franchisees, some class-action lawsuits which have been filed make allegations at mcdonald's providing software and equipment to the franchisees to monitor how labor costs are going and when it got to be too much they tell people to clock out. one of the things that is the main trick of people beat workers, clock out until it gets

busy, when it gets quiet, clock out again. this is something that's, again, you're cheating people out of poverty wages. these people have to make a decision whether they buy medicine or food or pay rent, and you're not even willing to pay them 7.25 an hour? >> the programs that are information and data the corporations amassed, the staffing algorithm determines maximizes profit and time, and literally asks employees to clock out when the restaurant isn't busy. now i think to most workers, that seems preposterous but fast food workers are new to the country, not the same amount of fluency in terms of u.s. labor laws. the point that they have come together and said, wait, this is wrong. somehow this is wrong, is a wonderful thing. are there organizations they are working with, helping workers realize when they're in situations that are unlawful? >> there are groups, in the area of fast food, sciu, working with

new york companies. it's up to us in law enforcement to take wage theft as seriously as we take car theft. there's been a little bit of a habit of saying these are sharp business practices. a lot of folks don't speak english, a lot of the folks are worried about getting in touch with the law, some undocumented. in new york, we don't care. in the state of new york come to our website, agny dot government. we're getting more and more folks standing up as whistle-blowers. there are some good folks in business who follow rules are tipping us off to the bad actors. this is a movement. the rise of low-wage works now is clearly a movement that is grow in country. it is spriding. big day of action on tuesday in new york and other places across the country. i thank them for calling everyone's attention in a very real way to the problem of inequality. and this is helping the push to

raise the men minimum wage. >> wind is in the sails of low income minimum wage workers in a way that is perhaps not with other labors across the country and bigger unions, it's a powerful story. these are jobs that a lot of people do not want to have. this is brutally hard work. it is thankless work, behind the scenes, low paid and to be cheating these hard working people out of literally cents every day is despicable, fighting the good fight as usual. >> thank you. in the car washes, some folks were paid $4 an hour. in that case the rwdsu and other unions are organizing them. but in new york we do not tolerate wage theft. if you want to steal someone's wallet, it's same as stealing their wages. wage theft is theft. it's not an advisory opinion to say you paid minimum wage. it is the law. >> it's the law. new york attorney general general, thank you as always for your time. after the break, the ceo of

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turmo turmoil, today russian-backed forces stormed a naval base, taking military leaders and civilians hostage. shortly after ukraine's acting president issued a deadline for the release of hostages "the new york times" is reporting an abrupt change this afternoon. they say ukraine is bowing to the reality of the crimean on make and pulling its troops from the disputed peninsula. coming up, first female federal reserve chair janet yellen faces another important set of firsts. details on her inaugural rate announcement. first press sit-down, that's next. check it out. i can't believe your mom has a mom cave! today i have new campbell's chunky spicy chicken quesadilla soup. she gives me chunky before every game. i'm very souperstitious. haha, that's a good one! haha! [ male announcer ] campbell's chunky soup.

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in the summer of 2009, three americans, sarah shourd, shane bauer and josh fattal, set out for a hike in iraqi kurdistan near the iranian border. at the time sarah and shane was living in da mass kas. josh had come to middle east to visit. a hike ended year of imprisonment when met by an iranian soldier at the board who lured the hikers on to iranian territory and then arrested them. the iranian government accused the three americans of being

spies and held on espionage charges in the evin prison kept in solitary confinement, regularly blindfolded and went on hunger strike. the u.s. and iran had no diplomatic ties at the time. it became unclear when and if the three americans would be released and return home. on september 14th, 2010, after nearly 14 months in prison and over 400 days in solitary confinement, sarah shourd released on humanitarian grounds. one year later, after intense diplomatic efforts and international condemnation of the incarceration, shawn and josh were released from evin prison. in the new book, "a sliver of light," sarah, shane, josh tell their story. joining me now, three hikers, sarah shourd, joshua fattal, shane bauer. happy to have you here. sarah, let me first start with

you. you have incredibly vivid, emotionally, wrenching passages where you describe what it is like to have been in solitary for 410 days. i'll read a short excerpt. i talked to myself, eat my food with my hands like an animal, spend hours crouched by the slot at bottom of my door listening for sounds sometimes i hear footsteps coming down the hall, race to the door and realized they're imagined or flashing lights dart across the periphery of my vision but when i turn my head they're gone. i wonder if you can tell us more about what it was first like to be thrown into solitary and what it was like to emerge? >> solitary confinement is like a slow death. the slow motion torture of being buried alive. you lose contact with who you were before, and when you don't know if you're ever going to get out, it's like you don't have a personality. without being able to reflect, have any dialogue with others,

your mind gets caught in repetiti repetition, in fearful thoughts and phobias. scientistic studies show after two to three days the brain waves shift toward stupor or delirium. i was in for 410 days, shane and josh in for four months. >> what was the sense, did you have -- what was your relationship to your jailers like? did you have correspondence? did you communicate in any way? did you have a sense that the end was coming before you finally got released? >> well, my main interrogator, he played up the good cop role. he gave me books. he also used kind of our connection to -- it seemed like to entertain himself. he had me recite william blake to prove i was an english teacher. the interrogation was a total farce. it that interrogation, it was hard not trust him and believe what he was saying.

he was saying you'll go to court, you'll be innocent, i know you're innocent and you'll go home. after three months he said i don't know if you're going to court, if you do, it may not be good, you may be here for a very long time. >> josh, everyone here was in solitary. one of the questions i have is, as sarah describes, the mind atrophies at a certain point. you know, practically what did you do to retain some sort of mental wherewithal to survive? >> i went through every year of my life, thinking about every memory i could come up with. i juggled oranges. i counted every mark on the wall, seeing if there was some logic to them. every prisoner seems to tally the wall. i average all of the different tallies, thinking that would determine when i was getting out. anything to keep my mind active but it didn't work. only way to get through is to just kind of wait it -- i mean there's not really a choice.

>> right. >> every moment as it comes, waiting for the time to pass. my mind is kind of -- became my own torturer in a way because it's the only thing i had. i think about my life and it became instead of a complicated full life i started thinking in terms of regrets and the present becomes just unbearable with nothing around you and the future is just fear. >> were you able to sleep? >> no, that was -- that was kind of how i dealt with it. everyone has different anxieties and different difficulties. for me i just -- i had a hard time sleeping. >> i would imagine the line between being awake and being asleep when you have no mile markers if you will. >> the light bulb on 24 hours a day. until we were able to sort of jump on top of like balance on top of the bed post and unscrew it, it was light 24 hours than didn't help. but i'd wrap my head in my pants

or the shirt or something to get darkness. it was just a different type of difficulties for each thing. i think each prisoner kind of has their own challenges in dealing with it, but it's universal, that being alone in a cell, there's nowhere to go but down. >> shane, what was it like when you came out? insofar as i mean, this experience obviously changes you. >> yeah. >> but in term of being able to interact with other people, sort of read the emotional or facial cues, after alone for so long, what happens to those abilities. >> i was in solitary for four months and then josh and i were put together. we were isolated from the rest of the world but in a cell with each other for almost two years. when i was released from prison, i, you know, had most joyous day of my life and quickly kind of

saw myself devolving in a different way. i had a hard time reading body language. after you know a couple of days, i told my family, who i was with, and sarah, i needed them to tell me exactly what they meant, you know, i couldn't read subtleties about body language except josh's. i could read every twitch in his face. i also had a hard time making choices which is -- which is common for people in general coming the of prison, once you're institutionalized and not practiced in making your own choices, you lose that ability. i would go it a restaurant and try to choose something to eat and i would -- i couldn't do it for a while. i also had a hard time being alone at times. i also had a hard time in being in public at times. it was a very frantic tension that, you know, i -- i adjusted

to being in this very isolated situation. so, it took me a long time to kind of readjust to the complexities of life on outside. >> you know, you asked sarah, you proposed to sarah while in jail. i wonder how much that became an anchor around which to tie this experience or some sort of thing that centered you emotionally and mentally. >> i know, sarah got out a year before josh and i, and when she gout, you know she was in many ways a hope for me and josh, you know, because we knew, we know how strong sarah is and was and she would be fighting endlessly and tirelessly for us. every once in a while we'd get a glimpse of her on tv and be glued to the television. >> one of you made it out and therefore possibility existed. you are a journalist, you are activists, advocates in a lot of ways. but the question of solitary confinement is something that

we've been talk about in the u.s. more than we have in the past. and i think it is worth reminding everybody watching this program, there are 80,000 people in the united states being held in solitary confinement, one would like to think, oh, but our solitary confinement is better than yours. the mere fact people we have kept, including people you have written about on mother jones who have been held in solitary for 42 years. >> yeah. >> tell us how your experience in the iranian prison has informed the investigative journalism you're doing now. >> i used to write about the middle east and after being in prison for a while, experiencing something like solitary confinement or indefinite detention without trial, these became things that i was concerned about, you know? it was such an injustice to myself. and such a hard thing to go through, when i got out and i heard about hunger strikes happening, protesting solitary confinement in this country i start digging into it and connecting with prisoners,

writing to prisoners and getting into their cases and finding that there are people that had been held for decades and some of whom had not committed violent acts in prison, you know. some in there for books they had. you know, things that they wrote about african-american history, for example, was used as evidence of gang affiliation, reason to put someone in solitary confinement. and i saw a lot of people were, when they landed in solitary confinement, it was hard for them to get out. >> right. >> years and decades could pass. >> we actually spoke about that very issue with benjamin wallace, a piece in the "new york" magazine about the hunger strike at pelican bay and how easy and arbitrary it is to get thrown into solitary and how almost impossible it is to get out. you've been corresponding with the inmates, one in particular. i wonder what the sharing of that experience is like for you. >> well, it's really helped me make sense of my own experience. when i first came out, i think one of the most horrifying

feelings was that i -- shane and josh were still in, nobody had understood what i had been through and i ex-about abou-abp connect. it was painful to connect with people. i had to fight for them. that was the only thing that made sense to me. but when i started to talk to other people, i realized that my symptoms, insomnia, hallucinations, you know, memory loss, not being able to concentrate, i would have a book and i would read the same paragraph over and over, not underend understanding anything, i'd throw it at the wall. i began talking to other people who experienced it. now i work with solitary watch and collected over 75 testimonies, we'll publish them in into a book and weave them into a play. there's momentum around this issue. there's several states, reduced their population in solitary, they're realizizing it doesn't

work. people come out worse than they go in. >> destroyed. >> you have to understand the people in solitary confinement, they haven't all committed violent acts in prison. some have but a lot end up in arbitrarily and petty infractions, there's no oversight. doing a review, audit, prison administrators realize a lot of these people can easily be let out. the practice is costly, costs two to three times as much. and up to a third of two-thirds of people in solitary contynement have mental illness going in. >> it's important to understand it doesn't really -- it doesn't work, you know, we have evidence that shows that, you know, people who come out of solitary confinement have less impulse control, recidivism is higher when i came out, you know, i was dealing with a lot of kind of pent-up anger that i couldn't explain, and tension. there were times that i felt like bursting. and i don't have kind of a violent past, you know?

i don't have -- it's not a way that i've kind of dealt with the feelings. for people that have, trying to change, that is a lot to overcome. >> devastating. >> the book is a powerful reminder we should re-examine what we're doing in this country and aboard as well. the book "a sliver of light." sarah shourd, josh fattal, shane bauer. texas republicans cannot seem to wrap their heads around the concept of equal pay. or anything related to women. i'll explain next. this is for you. ♪ [ male announcer ] bob's heart attack

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pradaxa may increase your bleeding risk if you're 75 or older, have a bleeding condition or stomach ulcer, take aspirin, nsaids, or blood thinners... ...or if you have kidney problems, especially if you take certain medicines. tell your doctors about all medicines you take. pradaxa side effects include indigestion, stomach pain, upset, or burning. if you or someone you love has afib not caused by a heart valve problem... ...ask your doctor about reducing the risk of stroke with pradaxa. men are better negotiators and i would encourage women instead of pursuing the courts for action to become better negotiators. >> texas republicans have a stunning, new message for women aren't being paid fair wages, it's your fault. the executive director of the texas republican party, the executive director, saying, on monday, instead of taking an employer to court for discrimination, women should just sharpen negotiating skills.

that is not the only tone-deaf response yet. finally, finally, texas attorney general greg abbott confirmed what everyone already knew that as governor he would veto pay equity laws leak the lilly ledbetter fair pay act. last week he dodged the question. but his office says he would oppose legislation that makes it easier for a woman to fight for a fair paycheck in the texas courts an cording to abbott's office, wage discrimination is against the law, and legal avenues already exist for victims of discrimination. currently, the law in texas only allows a woman to file a absolute against a company 180 days after the pay discrimination first began, i.e., first paycheck. under the federal lilly ledbetter act a woman has 180 days from the last paycheck to file the suit. the act recognizes pretty obvious fact that an employee

may not know she's being under paid on her first day of work and expends that period. why doesn't texas abide by federal law? attorney general greg abbott thought to exempt his state, and he won last year in the texas supreme court. abbott's clarification that he opposes additional pay equity laws comes the same day his office has a paycheck problem. the san antonio express news reported that female assistant attorneys general in abbott's office paid nearly $6,000 less than per year than male counterparts. overall, men in his office make $15,000 more than women. it is unclear if the women who work for abbott agree into no new legislation is necessary because wage discrimination is technically against the law and it's an issue not confined to his offices. in the lone star state, women are paid on average 9,000 less than men. texas women make 79 cents for every dollar their male

counterparts are paid. on sunday the director of red state women tried to explain republican opposition to the lilly ledbetter act. >> we don't believe the lilly ledbetter act is what's going to solve that problem for women. we believe women want real world solutions to this problem, not more rhetoric. >> apparently taking a company to court for paying a woman a fraction of a man's salary isn't a real world solution. so what answer do republicans have? >> women are extremely busy. we lead busy lives whether working professionally, working from home, and times are extremely busy. it's a busy cycle for women and we've got a lot to juggle. and so when we look at this issue, we think what's practical? and we want more access to jobs. we want to be able to go -- get

a heyer education degree at the sometime we're work organize raising a family. >> translation, string together a bunch of words of women and family and jobs and busy cycles and juggling things but off nor policy or answers. it doesn't seem all that practical a strategy in the end. trying to fight something as fundamentally logical as equal pay for equal work, maybe it's better to avoid the details. that's all for "now." see you back here tomorrow 4:00 p.m. eastern. "the ed show" up next. >> good evening, americans. welcome to "the ed show" live from new york. let's get to work! >> if russia continues to interfere in ukraine, we stand ready to impose further sanctions. >> i think vladimir putin must be encouraged by the absolute tim midty. >> i heard this theory everything was just fine until we arrived.