this morning, my question -- what do we make of labor's super-sized win? plus, attorney general eric holder's urgent call for change. and the little pink house that is still standing. first, predatory lending at the car lot. good morning, i'm melissa harris-perry. the data are in, the results are clear, even if the reason is

not. but this much we now know to be true -- it's better with a democrat. the economy, that is. so says two economists at princeton university. alan blinder and mark watson. now, these are two of the top economists in the country. and in july they released a paper entitled "presidents and the u.s. economy: an economic exploration." maybe the title doesn't scream 63-page summer beach read material, but nerdland rejoice because we have the highlights. among them, the u.s. economy has grown faster and scored higher on many other macro economic metrics when the president of the united states is a democrat rather than a republican. the members tell the tale. from 1947 to 2012, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 4.35 with a democrat in the oval office and 2.54 with a republican. whereas we can get into deficit spending versus supply side economics, stimulus versus

austerity, social safety net versus wall street coddling, it turns out it may be just better to be lucky, you know, than to be good, so says blinder and watson. the data minors at box.com explained the findings this way -- saying the economists essentially find that roughly laugh of the difference in growth rates can be chocked up to three or four factors. democratic presidents have historically been hurt less by oil shocks and have benefited more from productivity boones, favorable international conditions, and possibly higher consumer confidence. but in politics, a win is a win. and on the economy this week, president obama wanted to make clear one thing -- he is winning. >> you know, in my first term, if i had a press conference like this typically, everybody'd want to ask about the economy. and how come jobs wenchren't be created, how come the housing

market's still bad. you know, why isn't it working, and -- you know what, what we did worked, and the economy's better. >> i just love second term president obama. come on, ask me about the -- ask me about the good stuff. better to the tune of 209,000 jobs created in july. revised figure from june of 298,000 jobs created. in fact, now sick straight months of job -- six straight months of job creation greater than 200,000. >> we are now in a six- month streak with at least 200,000 new jobs each month. that's the first time that has happened since 1997. we've recovered faster and come farther from the recession than almost any other advanced country on earth. >> but wait, there's more. on wednesday, the u.s. government announced that for the second quarter of 2014, gdp growth rate was 4%, handily beating analysts' expectations. chrysler, that u.s. automaker

saved by the obama administration, this week reported its best july since 2005 with sales rising by 20%. and warren buffett's berkshire hathaway, largely seen as a bellwether for the overall economy, soared to new heights announcing friday second-quarter profit of 41% with net income of $6.4 billion. no wonder the president was in kind of a victory lap mood. >> companies are investing, consumers are spending, american manufacturing, energy, technology, autos, all are ballparking. >> all right. it's a victory lap. i'm going to need you to pump your brakes because there is always the potential that when there's a boom the next thing is a bust. and one word in particular is making its way back into the headlines recently that must give us pause. sub prime. those type of loans so prominent in housing ahead of the crash in 2007 may be seeing a comeback. and this time they're in the auto market. a stunning investigation by "the

new york times" found that sub prime auto loans are on the rise. and they're exhibiting predatory tendencies. according to "the new york times" report, auto loans to people with tarnished credit have risen more than 130% in the five years since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis with roughly one in four new auto loans last year going to borrowers considered sub prime. "times" investigation found subproclaim auto loans can come with -- interest rates exceeding 23%. loans were typically the size of the value of the used cars purchased. and such loans can thrust already vulnerable borrowers further into debt, even prop propelling some into bankruptcy. what is driving the number of sub prime loans? according to the report, some of the nation's biggest banks and private equity firms are feeding the growth in subprime loans by taking money for investors.

like the mortgage crisis, many of the subprime loans are bun e bundled and sold as securities. stay with me, because this is important and complicated to understand. a new article by "the new yorke yorker"'s john lancaster sbaned mortgages. the bank no longer gets money from the lending. instead, it flows to the people who bought the mortgage-backed securities and the institution that lent the money no longer cares whether the bow rrower wi be able to pay it back. the premise that you lend money only to those who can repay it has been undermined. if you've been asking why would a lender make a loan that can't be paid back, doesn't that lose the money? the answer may be that the lender bundled the loan and sold it so they get paid before it defaults. what happened to the borrower, the person trying to buy the car in this case, becomes pretty irrelevant. the subprime loans are becoming increasingly large as a slice of all u.s. auto loans. this graph from "the new york times" shows the level of auto

loans since 2006. and you see the dip during the housing crisis. the subsequent growth with the number of loans in 2013 higher than in 2006. that's good for the economy except when you look at part of the bar that is shaded darker. those are subprime loans, and their number has been growing in past years. "the new york times'" investigation found subprime auto lenders are loosening credit standards and focusing on the riskiest borrowers. practices the paper says demonstrate that wall street is again taking on very risky investments just six years after the financial crisis. so that distinctive new car smell that the used car salesmen spray into every new vehicle so that you can feel like you got a good deal, well, that may actually be the foul odor of predatory lending. joining me now is david k. johnston, contributing editor at "newsweek," and professor at syracuse college of law. and senior fellow, manhattan institute and opinion editor at "forbes." nice to have you here.

>> thanks for having us. >> if we are back in the land potentially of subprime, let's go back to the fight that occurred around the crash which is who is at fault here -- bad borriers or bad lenders? -- borrowers or band lenders? >> i'm say bad lenders. but it goes back further. the big untold story is the degree to which monetary policy from the federal reserve, ben bernanke and janet yellen, have driven the situation. your "new yorker" piece says why is wells fargo, say, able to package loans and sell them to other investors? why would these investors buy these loans knowing that they're subprime? the reason is that interest rates are so low, 0.25% by the fed, that if inflation is 2%, as an nor, you're losing money by sitting on the cash. >> i feel like what you said to me -- i'm i'm unfair, i feel like what you said is, oh, these poor investors are basically, you know, starved for profit. of course they've got to make bad loans in order to get their money back. >> no. not at all am i saying they're

poor. what i'm saying is the economic incentives that they've been driven to have by the lending environment, the special environment, is driving them to seek higher risk loans, the catalyst of the process. >> and that's where i would agree that you're right about the effort to see higher loans. car lending was exempt from the consumer protection acts. what we're seeing is the junk bond guy who destroyed great companies and built a few good new ones. that is if you can borrow money at as little as a quarter percent, typically more like three, and lend to people at 23 and 30, this a very good business to be in no matter what. and notice people are typically being charged twice the actual value of the car. i told about a woman this happened to in my book, "free lunch." interest rates are often much higher, it's now over 60% of used cars are being financed with these kinds of loans. this screams for can we need to actually have regulation. >> right, because -- so i appreciate part of what you're saying, is okay, it is an

incentive environment, right. and this is part of your point about regulation. how do we change the incentives in the environment when we create new regulations? so from my perspective, raising interest rates, which would further harm buyers, particularly those trying to get into a housing market where the -- each incremental increase is substantially larger than on an auto loan would be so harmful for buyers that it would be -- it would be bad for the economy even if it would yield more for investors. >> so i look at the exact opposite way. >> okay. >> whether we have low interest rates -- when we have low interest rates, we're encouraging people to borrow money, perhaps more than their means. what that's doing is driving up in the mortgage market demand for gigantic mortgages and for the housing supply. what does that do? housing prices are more expensive. it becomes more expensive to buy a home and more expensive to rent a home. >> that hasn't been what's happening in housing. >> the market is strong. >> the housing market is also, as american banker and others have shown, being manipulated. there's a lot of withholding on

the market. in most cities like new york, you can't withhold apartments because it artificially inflates prices. there's a great deal of gameplaying going on because of the regulation. it's not like we don't know how to regulate banks, right? i teach the law of the ancient world. we've been regulating banks and banking for 4,000 years. it's only somehow in the last 30 that we've gotten an idea that, oh, these people know what they're doing, we don't need to regulate them. yes, we do. >> i don't think t's than -- >> not in a way that's meaningful to protect the interest of the vast minority of americans. don't have the right regulation. >> particular in the question of cars, it seems that this question of consumer protection. in part because, you know, i get the argument that might say, well, everyone needs a home to live in, but not everybody needs a car. if you can't afford it, just don't buy one. whether we look at the realities -- whether we look at the realities particularly of poor people being pushed fatherer and farther from where jobs are and a public infrastructure that is simply insufficient for moving workers to their jobs, i mean,

don't cars become almost as necessi necessity? couldn't we massively envelope in public infrastructure? >> a lot of poor people in washington, d.c., could go to work on metro transit, but it doesn't open until 5:30 for office workers. people who need to be to work at 5:30 or 6:00 don't. these are government policies that we could change and be more efficient. in the car loan business, you know, there's enormous profit here. you take a $10,000 car, you sell it to someone who doesn't know the real value because they're not sophisticated for 20, you charge $23% interest. and wells fargo, a warren buffett bank, a leader in this field, they told the woman i wrote about, we're going to take your house. she was a homeowner. if you don't pay all this money, we're going to take your house. >> in fact, hold on. we don't have a lot of time. but i want to listen so we don't miss this, there are real people involved. i want to listen to jonathan and marceline who purchased a car at a subprime loan who in "the new york times" were featured. i want to take a quick listen to

them. >> we had received a flayier in the mail -- flyer in the mail talking about you are approved for a loan. >> all i would have to do is basically show up, pick what car i wanted, and then be able to get a loan regardless of the fact if i went bankrupt or not. i know that when you take out loans and you pay off the loans on time, it does make you build your credit faster. i'd be able to maybe buy a house one day. that's what i was thinking. >> so i just -- i wanted to hear from them as we go out. both of you, stick with me. we've got much more on the economy, on labor, on real people, including also on congressman paul ryan's poverty plan this morning. first, the latest on the american with ebola being treated in the united states next. a body at rest tends to stay at rest... while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. staying active can actually ease arthritis symptoms. but if you have arthritis, staying active can be difficult. prescription celebrex can help relieve arthritis pain

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this morning, the treatment continues in a special isolation room at emory university hospital for the first of two american aide workers infected with the ebola virus. a plane carrying dr. kent bratly landed yesterday at dobbins air reserve base near atlanta, georgia. from there, dr. brantly was transported to emory university hospital. one of four facilities in the u.s. equipped to handle the risks associated with treating and containing the deadly virus. as this video shows, dr. brantly climbed out of the back of the ambulance with some assistance. then incredibly, walked himself in to the hospital. he and his guide were covered head to toe in hooded b biocontaminant suits. and the 33-year-old doctor is the first known ebola patient to have ever set foot in the united states or eastern the western hemisphere. the other infected aide worker, missionary nancy wrightbull is exepted to arrive for treatment in the next few days.

in western africa, the situation continues to deteriorate with the deadly virus claiming the lives of at least 729 people and hundreds more still infected. after the break, labor had a big, big win this week. when folks think about what they get from alaska, they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that's not a coincidence. it's one more part of our commitment to america.

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great rates for great rides. geico motorcycle, see how much you could save. the labor movement received a big boost tuesday when the national labor relations backward recalled that mcdonald's has a joint employer of the worker at its franchise operations. if the ruling holds, mcdonald's would be liable for labor and wage violations, and this could make it easier for fast food workers to unionize nationwide. this ruling comes after the nlrb invested charges that franchisees and mcdonald's violated the rights of employees as a result of employee participation in protests against the company. the general counsel of the nlrb released the following statement about their investigation: "the national labor relations board office of the general counsel has had 181 cases involving

mcdonald's filed since november, 2012. of those cases, 68 were found to have no merit. 64 cases are currently pending investigation. and 43 cases have been found to have merit." mcdonald's was not happy with the decision and is determined it fight. in an e-mail to cnbc, the mcdonald's koerpgd said, "mcdonald's will contest this allegation in the appropriate forum. mcdonald's also believe that this decision changes the rules for thousands of small businesses and goes against decades of established law regarding the franchise model in the united states." back at the table, jadavid k. n johns ton, and peter sudeman and the michelle martin, host at npr who is part of the identity and culture unit.

nice to have you all here. >> thank you. >> david, is labor back with this ruling? >> well, this isn't so much a ruling as an accusation under labor laws. the technical term is charge, but that suggests criminal, and it's not. but this is very important. the -- the laws we have on this were written in the '30s for industrial corporations. we haven't updated them for the franchise model. mcdonald's exerts fantastic control over every franchisee. and the suggestion that they are not deeply involved in every aspect including the wages because of their flaun over everything else i think won't stand up to scrutiny. this is going to be fought for years. we need to update labor laws. >> speaking of which, is mcdonald's right, though, that this suddenly challenges the notion of the franchise model? or is it just about the model that is a mcdonald's one that says you're a franchisee, but you have to use this kind of catchup, these -- i mean, there's different ways to franchise, some of which have

relatively more flexibility versus less. >> i think it's too soon to know exactly what the implications of this are going to be. we don't have a huge amount of details from the nlrb on this yet. but i think it's potentially a big blow to the franchise model in the united states. and i think that that is a real problem for small business owners and in particular for minorities and immigrant because minorities and immigrant own franchises at a much higher rate than they own other type of businesses. so this is a key pathway to entrepreneurship, to ownership, for minorities and immigrants, and that's -- if you take that away and you make it harder for them to get franchises or the franchise model goes away entirely, what you end up doing is putting more -- more power in the hands of a big corporation. in the hands of these corporate units rather than these small business owners. >> i appreciate the point here about the ways in which -- for example, the mcdonald's black owners and franchisee organization is one of the

strongest small business ownership around. i actually do appreciate that as part of what's important about franchising. but i guess i'm surprised to think that paying a living wage would necessarily mean a -- a corporatization -- the power among corporations would be increasingly in just a few -- we're talking about mcdonald's here. >> did anybody else work at mcdonald's? does anybody else here work at mcdonald's? >> i was a domino's driver. >> did you work at snolds. >> his family who -- mcdonald's? >> i had family who did. >> i worked there in college. i closed -- tell you how long ago this was, you got five cents an hour more depending on how many skills that you acquired. so if you learned how to shake -- if you learned how to clean the shake machine, then you would get five cents an hour. if you closed the store, you got five cents an hour additional. i thought i would have some real-world experience with. this beth this. both of are you right from my experience, you're taught how to do everything. a lot like the military. people say why are -- why is the

military the most successfully integrated institution in the society, it's because they don't keep it a secret how you succeed. i mean, everything is laid out, you make it very clear. i also think your point is right. and i'd like to make a broader point. the political right in this country is very uninterested in the dignity of persons. unfortunately, i mean, they're very uninterested it seems in the dignity of persons in this country, they're interested in the dignity of persons overseas, it seems, when they are people that they relate to. but they're not very interested in the dig nut of persons here, which is why they're indifferent to issues like racial profiling. seems that the political left is indifferent to the desire of people to acquire wealth. the fact is before the recession took hold, the groups that had the fastest rate of business formation were, as you know, it's something you reported on, minorities and minority women in particular. >> right. in part because you were so far down that the steepness of that curve -- >> it's true. the political left needs to understand that people don't just want to survive, they want to stlithrive. they need to develop a language of understanding about wealth.

why is it that people are concerned about mega billionaires and their influence over communication networks? there's no counterveiling force. seems that the political left needs to get serious about the fact that people want to acquire wealth. people who want to acquire wealth are newcomers to the table. that's what needs to be sorted out. >> part of what you did of remind us that within a world, global community. part of what i'm interested in is given that morlcdonald's is international corporation that deals are labor laws and practices, how does mcdonald's operate in nations like paris, france, god help me, my in-laws had mcdonald's in paris. horrifying. yeah, how do they manage it where there are very different labor laws? >> this is a great point. at a subway or mcdonald's in europe it costs so much because of the labor laurs mandaws mand. we talk about the dignity of the

people, small business owners. what about the people who work there? the unemployment rate in this country is 9.8% for people who haven't finished high school compared to 3.1% for people with a college degree. these jobs are a gateway for those individuals. so if you shut down these -- that's going to happen. a lot of franchises will close. not only -- they absolutely will. >> no, they won't. >> they will. >> i want to take a break and come back on this. i want to ask this when we come back -- if this were to move forward and you had unionization of fast food workers, would in fact franchises close, and what would the impact be? o's more exo school savings at staples? the moms? or the dads? with guaranteed low prices on colored pencils, it's definitely the dads. staples. make more happen for less.

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>> first of all, i don't think it will be upheld in the courts. we have 32 years of presence in the judicial system and in nlrb's rulings in the past, in the 1980s, that suggest the franchise model does work. the franchisees do actually hire and fire people. they determine what the wage is, mcdonald's headquarters and -- >> i'm asking for the thought experience. >> basically what all the evidence shows is that when you increase wage, you mandate increased wages, you have uni i unionization, the costs go up, and you hire less people. the combination of cost increases and less -- >> there's a great deal of research showing quite the opposite. that when wages go up, these are stimulatives for -- >> that's right. there's a study of matched counties. this state, this state border each other, higher wage, no higher wage. there's throw damage we can find whatsoever -- there's no damage we can find whatsoever.

prices adjust. nobody's going from $7.25 to $15 overnight. >> pry will adjust, the costs -- >> you're not going to be paying $14 for a hamburger at mcdonald's. workers will demand more money, fewer government services, they will be able to build better lives. you know, the question is, if we don't believe in having a minimum wage for standards, we have standards for airplane safety, car safety, food safety, but not wages? >> and isn't this true that -- isn't it true for those who want smaller government, the point david's making, in fact, people working at mcdonald's, at walmart, at a variety of low wage jobs especially on tip minimum are in circumstances where they are making use of s.n.a.p., section 8, isn't it better to earn it as wages? >> all else being equal, yes.

but with higher prices, specifically with mcdonald's, if you listen to what they've told investors and what corporate has told investors the last couple of years, they've been struggling to move their customer base off the dollar menu. that means people cannot afford to pay more than just a couple of dollars for food. so very marginal -- >> that's because of minimum wage. i mean, aren't these things -- if you -- i mean, this -- i life that you said that, right? if in fact you are a fast food restaurant for people who make minimum wage, then an increase in the minimum wage means the sale of your more expensive products, your $3 products instead of your $1 products, that is why it is stimulative to have a higher minimum wage. >> here the crux of the problem. we're talking nonstop about wages. we're not talking about the cost of living. and that's the other part of the equation. you can do thing to make it less expensive to buy food, less expensive to buy clothes, less expensive to put a roof over your head. those costs are going up because

of government policies. >> you're acting like there's no -- >> but to reduce the cost of living -- >> no, the easier solution it to reduce the amount of profit being undered at tearned at the- >> i don't want to lower profit. they shouldn't earn it by having lower wages -- >> there's a cushion that exists. we're behaving as though there's a fixed pie, right? but the fact is there's already a cushion that exists because of these enormous -- >> there are fast fad operators who spend a higher amount of wages -- part of his argument is to increase the earned income tax credit and extend to other groups of people. that's another way to address the same problem. i know he wouldn't like this term, but socializes the cost of elevating wages by distributing the cost across the labor pool, that system. so that is -- those are the only policy choices out there is either the minimum wage and keeping people at the low wages.

you can do that. >> and michelle martin brought us where we're going after the break which is to congressman paul ryan's plan and the ways in which it is socialist? no.

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congressman paul ryan is taughting his recently released anti-poverty proposal that he thinks will help alleviate poverty in america. the proposal has an ambitious title, "expanding opportunity in america." it would consolidate funding or streamlined support for 11 federal programs including the supplemental nutrition assistance program or s.n.a.p., temporary aid for families -- for needy family, section 8 rental assistance, and the childcare development fund. the core part is something called the opportunity grant. states that opt in receive a single block of aid that they can determine how to use to tackle poverty. congressman ryan insist its's not a traditional block grant which gives all the money to the

states to oversee and use at their discretion. >> the biggest policy is what we call the opportunity grant. the opportunity grant gives states the ability to conduct innovative reforms and ways to getting people from welfare to work. it consolidates up to 11 programs into a single funding stream. it's not just a loose string block grant. the states have to do a few things. >> block grants are nothing new. they've been around since the 1960s. back in 1996, congress and then president bill clinton changed the aid to families with dependent children instead of keeping it a federal/state partnership, it was made special the current temporary assistance for needy families program and was given to states as the block grant. and while block grants may offer a certain level of flexibility for state, there's also the understandable concern on how to ensure accountability for spending and outcomes. so this proposal, let's start

with the likelihood that it ever become law. you were saying about nlrb, any sense about what weather this beco-- about whether this becomes the things that govern the way the safety net is addressed? >> there's a draft, there's no budget numbers. it's an attempt to get away there discussion about budget numbers and reframe the conversation. especially on the right it how to reform poverty programs and government aid programs. and i don't think that this draft in -- or something that looks exactly like this is ever going to become law. i think the same with paul ryan, he's a policy entrepreneur. he can take the republican party and move the party. he did this with medicare. he's done this with his other budget plans. this is an interesting effort to --not just to reframe the conversation overall, but also to move his own party from thinking about how can we cut spending on everything to how can we make our spending better.

you had can -- how can we serve people better? >> i get the devolution from the federal to the state government as making sense within the context of what i think of as american conservatism. what i don't get is the part of the plane where he imagines these individually -- the plan where he imagines these individually tailored life splans. social worker, someone who is going to make this contract for the average person and will have benchmarks, and they'll will have to determine sort of, you know, when they meet these goals. that, david, sounds like a huge government program. i mean, maybe that's where the jobs will come from. they will hire poor people to be their own life coaches? i'm not sure. >> talk about infringing on your individual liblt here. and the underlie -- liblt heerte and the underlying notion. i'm having a hard time reconciling the budget plan and the effort to refrain. block grants, i read about a block grant once to help poor people. it built a hyatt hotel. that's what's going to happen if we have this freedom to innova e

innovate. it's going to be distorted. so this is -- he also is proposing -- >> we've seen it happen with the aca. i mean, it becomes so -- disport sudden one word, the other word is politicized. that the question of the choices that are made are not made fundamentally based on some sort of dispassionate policy analysis. they're made by people who are elected officials who are -- >> right. but politics is the means by which government happens. so that's -- >> or stops happening. >> i would like to say why can't we talk about the ideas for a minute? part of the thing people decry about politics is it seems very small and that there are no ideas. and everybody's looking toward the next election, like looking toward the next quarterly profits. today's crazy idea becomes tomorrow's policy. like electric cars or alternative fuels. so it seems to me it behooves people who have disappointed with the state of the politics who today people do offer ideas to at least consider those ideas. seriously. one of the things that i found -- i agree with you about block grants. this is like -- i remember when i started covering politics like block grants, the first thing that i covered.

this is old school reaganomics. the idea of reducing the paperwork burden on individuals is something that i think is important to consider. i think the political right is very -- you know, very obsessed with reducing the paperwork burden on businesses. seems to be uninterested in the paperwork on individuals -- >> the burden on poor people, though -- >> but the idea is one that has to be addressed because nobody talks about it. the idea that people want you to get fingerprinted and want you to take a urine test to get food stamps. when middle-class people are out of food or -- they run in to a difficult -- their neighbors bring them food. that's what happens. or if they need, they get short at the end of the month, they access a personal credit line. when you have no money -- the idea of reducing the paperwork burden on individuals is important to even consider. >> but what the proposal does -- i want to be clear, what the proposal does is aim to set up a set of standards by which poor people will be held accountable to a set of things and, in fact,

middle-class people are not. it is true that there's a safety net that exist for the middle class in friendship networks and work tlairelationships that don exist for poor people. but -- in order to take your mortgage interest deduction, you don't have to prove that your kid graduated from high school, right? your kid can be failing in school and you still get your mortgage interest deduction which is a huge transfer to the middle class. >> when you pointed out the aca, this is the same political movement that didn't want to allow doctor to discuss people's end-of-life plans with them. there's that piece of. i credit your point on this. the idea of allowing people the opportunity to get access to these things in a more efficient way fwheeds to needs to be cons. >> what if we went back to nixon's idea and hand poor people cash? it turns out that's a very effective and useful method. >> the earned income tax credit does that. i think that's -- >> you have to qualify for it. >> the paul ryan plan expands,

significantly expands the earned income tax credit. and to get back fundamentally, what's paul ryan trying to do he's trying to to say the debate on the left and right is spend more money, spend less money on projects. we spend -- let's not have the debate. say we're going to spend the same pot of money, but let's figure out how to spend it better. that discussion inner thatty should be lead ideological. we can say which programs work, which programs don't work? >> we don't spend $900 billion on social security and medicare -- >> that's what he's trying to do. to your point about how this is going to evolve in the future, this is the first inning. you'll see a healthy debate on the right on how to put this forward, what's going to work, what's not going to work, the presidential primary -- >> i would claim that it's not the first inning. that in fact this is -- maybe this is -- >> overtime? >> we have actually been having -- that said. thank you. peter is coming back in our next hour. first, as working moms, michelle and i have a few things to discuss, next. i love to eat. i love hanging out with my friends.

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for seven years, michelle martin has host -- michel martin has showed examination of difficult, controversial, and missing issues that shape our lives and our world. i have long regarded her as an exemplar after which i model my own work. "tell me more" may have aired the last episode friday, but michel martin has more to tell us. she has shared some of those thoughts in the "national journal essay" published july 26th. in her article, "what i've left unsaid," martin explores experiences women of color have when trying to balance work and family. amen. motivated by anne marie slaughter's 2012 essay "why women still can't have it all," martin tackles the unique complications women of color face in the elusive effort to have it all. and martin draws on her personal narrative of managing career and children and goes further, also exploring the struggles of women

like shanesha taylor, a homeless mother arrested after leaving two of her kids in the car during a job interview. a south carolina mom arrested for letting her 9-year-old play alone in the park while she completed her shift at mcdonald's. in classic martin style, the piece allows read force give context to their own lives and forces them to move beyond the personal and grapple with the political. to tell us more is michel martin. >> thank you, you're going to make me cry. >> i feel like i want to cry knowing that i won't have you on a daily basis anymore to listen to. it seems to me that so much of what you did on that show and in doing the piece, as well, is to make us listen to voices we typically wouldn't listen to. >> thank you for that. that's absolutely right. also to draw connections. i mean, to draw connection. i mean, i am not one of these people who buys into the 18th century enlightenment that if we all had the same facts we'd come to the same conclusions.

i think we know that's not true. but trying to draw connections to people who may not have considered the ways in which their lives -- the struggles they have and how they're connected to other people's struggles, but ohio they're differe-- but how they're different. and to consider those things. i'm not trying to be too grand, but this is my letter from birmingham jail. i'm talking to colleagues, we meet up at starbucks, but they don't understand what brought me to that place and after i leave. not just that, but other people. that's the connection i'm trying to draw. >> i had such an amen moment about your piece when you write, "it's been my observation that minorities are more likely than whites to be involved with or take financial responsibility for people other their own or parents. it can include buying school supplies or paying for tutoring to raising a child for an extended period of time." i was like, yes, amen, indeed. that notion that we are -- we find natural resources community that's are so underresourced

means that we're spending individual household resources in ways time, energy, money, love. that may not -- may be invisible to others. >> it is. this is one of the reasons that i was so glad to have the opportunity to have this piece. also why i'm grateful for scholars like yourself who are bringing these issues to the fore and using language that people can understand like kinship circles. i saw a piece the other day in the online publication where somebody gang language to there which i had never heard before. it was kinship service. this is a fact. i understand that. this is where policy loops in to it. a lot of times our workplace policies -- people don't wanted what they're doing. i had -- people don't understand what they're doing. his a colleague very involved in the raising of her nephew. does fmla cover it when you need to leave at 3:00 to pick up a never sue? do people understand? i've had people write and say, you know, i am behind in my

career because i'm taking care two of elderly aunts. and there is no other family to do this. that's what i'm doing. so can i get recognition for that? i also think this is an issue -- >> what about when the aunt isn't really your aunt? if your mom's best friend who's been your aunt your whole -- you're right. that policy doesn't cover that. but that is -- those are the realities of life. >> like i think you covered the woman in ohio who was arrested and sent to jail for selling her child to school in the district that she wasn't -- they said she was not allowed to go to. well, the children live with her father. their grandfather. he considered himself and she considered him a co-parent. and they resided with him. yet, she was prosecuted for this for sending her children to school in the district where he lived. and i note in that case because i talked to the school superintendent in that case, that there were some 30 some people who were similarly investigated. the majority of whom were white and asian. she was the only one prosecuted

which brings me to another aspect of the piece that i wanted to point out. the fact that the relationships that a lot of us have with institutions like law enforcement can be very different. so you need to pay attention to that. >> it seems to me that in your work, in your writing, you have a very clear focus on finding solutions. it's not just about -- you have the barber shop, but you don't let the guys who come from the barber shop and complain about. it this piece isn't -- man, it's so hard for us brown girls to balance it. >> thank you for saying that. i wanted to be clear. as i said in the piece, we're not -- i'm not looking for pity. >> no, no. >> guilt is not interesting to me because i don't have that it achieves anything. >> just the complication autos -- how do you begin imagining -- how does rendering these complicated kinship networks for example visible help us to make better policy? >> this is where -- you know, in our previous segment, you know, talking to the other gentlemen, this is where i'd like us to be free in our imagining. the test of some of these issues, for example for me, the test of paul ryan's seriousness about his budget proposal will

be does he find a peace partner. does he find somebody on the progressive left who shares his vision about re-imagining prosecutor, and is he willing to work with people. this is why i believe in diverse panels. this is why i believe in diversity broadly defined. that's what it requires to move forward on these issues. and i -- and it requires people to re-imagine some of these issues in places where we get stuck. so that's the -- the first thing. i want to be clear. i didn't write this piece. i'm not buying in to a particular strategy or solution. i think there are strategies on the left and right. what i don't like is the silence. i don't like the fact that we can pretend that the issue don't exist or that we are blind to them or work ourselves into grooves around these issues where we don't acknowledge the world as it's really lived. i mean, i was grateful to have the opportunity to write this piece because i go to forum after forum. like aim grate for anne-marie slaughter writing her piece, all the conversation was about, well, how can i get my promotion, how can my daughter

get what she want, how can i get who what i want when the point is -- how can we get more of what all of us want. >> you know, i think you have laid a challenge at the nerdland table which doesn't happen often. i feel like we'll have to revisit mr. ryan's plan. totally free of politics. just think about -- if i don't like the ideas, ought to be able to say what it is about the ideas that i don't like as opposed to just the politics. >> you're in the ideas business. go get it. >> i love that. michel martin, thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. coming up, attorney general eric older says we're at a watershellwater watershed. why he is pushing harder than ever and some of his most unlikely allies. defiance is in our bones. defiance never grows old. citracal maximum. easily absorbed calcium plus d. beauty is bone deep.

♪ fill their bowl with the meaty tastes they're looking for, with friskies grillers. tender meaty pieces and crunchy bites. in delicious chicken, beef, turkey, and garden veggie flavors. friskies grillers. wherever morning takes you, take along nature valley soft-baked oatmeal squares. oatmeal. cinnamon. softly-baked. nature valley soft-baked oatmeal squares. welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. we are at a watershed in the debate over how to reform our sentencing laws. that was what attorney general eric holder said friday at a gathering of criminal defense lawyers in philadelphia.

progress has been made in holder's and others' efforts to reform the practices that disproportionately incarcerate people of color and keep american prisons overcrowded. two weeks ago, the united states sentencing commission agreed that judges should be able to retroactively apply new, more lenient sentencing guidelines to those already in prison on drug-related charge. 46,000 prisoners could be eligible to have their sentences revised. efforts are underway throughout the states to reduce prison populations. not least of all because of the tightness of state budgets. also stemming from a growing recognition that incarceration does not necessarily lady to less crime. friday, holder warned against one of the newer tools some states are experimenting with using data-driven risk assessments to try to calculate the likelihood that a person will commit another crime in the future. the higher the risk, the longer the prison sentence. as you can imagine, sentencing defendants based on the

statistical likelihood that they may create another crime in the future raises red flags. attorney general holder said, "by basing sentencing decisions on static factors and imutable characteristics like the defendant's education level, socio-economic background, or neighborhood, it may exacerbate unwarranted and unjust disparities that are already far too common in our criminal justice system and in our society." with me at the table is co-host of more than's "the cycle," and also a lawyer. reverend vivian nixon, executive director of the college and community fellowship and co-founder of the education inside out coalition. and peter sudeman, editor at "reason" magazine and reason.com. nice to have you with us. >> good morning. >> ari, you have been thinking about these questions for a long time, but explicitly in your public work recently. is holder on to something about the problems posed by large data

as a basis for sentencing on the front end of the process? i think he is. he took pains in the spaech to make sure data in other fields can be used well, money ball stuff that we all say, okay, yeah, you can use numbers and see larger patterns. the point he makes that is valid is whenever we learn about pat americans criminology, we have a system that has to value each individual situation. and the idea that we are going to focus on a pattern of potential reoffense to deny someone their liberty under due process of law is highly problematic. we don't generally do pre-crime in the u.s. for good reason. we leave that to tom cruise and "minority report" because it is scary and so unjust. there was one exception under american law in the area of child sexual abuse and pedophilia, which still can be controversial. there is extended time there. and that's something special for

preying on children. we generally say in most crimes you should be judged for what you did, and not what you may do. >> which is why the attorney general then made a distinction between data driven assessment at the front end of the sentencing about, as he said, immutable characteristics as opposed to driven at the back end around parole and probation where you look at behaviors and say, oh, this person while in jail received their ged while incarcerated made these ten steps toward sorted of demonstrating their good citizenship within the incarcerated community -- people who do that have a tendency t tton -- not to recidivate. >> it's also flawed because not everybody the nays ared have equal access to -- incarcerated have equal access to opportunities. women in general have less access to programs inside of prison than men. >> not completing the program

may not be because you refuse -- >> it may not be available to you. one of the data factors that's widely considered during parole hearings is the nature of the crime, something that the individual can never change. i would argue that this whole risk assessment thing is being looked at backwards. i want to know will we ever consider -- what is the risk to the individual of being released into a community where there are still 45,000 individual collateral consequences to criminal conviction that they'll have to face upon release. what is the risk to the individual of being released back into a community where doing something mundane on the street, you may be choked to death. what is the risk to being black in america? these are the risks that i would like to say us assess as a nation. >> interesting because -- as you ask that question, as you flip that, it's similar to something ari asked.

we were talking about paul ryan's budget. i heard michel martin say can he find a partner on the left, the most interesting partnership now between the right and left is rand paul and cory booker, the senator thinking about this question. i want to show a little of ari's offand ask but the responses we heard -- interview and ask you about the responses we heard. >> in your view, is the enforcement of the war on drugs race scientist. >> well, i think it has a racial outcome is a better way to pete it. >> do you think it's accidentally racist or explicitly so? >> i think you're complicating this far more than it needs to be. rand said it simply, this has a profound racially disparate impact, and we need to solve it using means by which we take a dumb, broken system, frankly, and make it work for every american. this system is broken. you don't have to call it black or white, racially impact -- use just got to do something about it. >> do you have -- i mean, on the one hand, here's the liberal

aspect finding common ground on the question of sentencing reform and drug policy reform. but there's still had race piece which -- which was put on the table that still seems difficult for us to tackle. >> so the specific proposal that rand paul and cory booker came out with recently is a poem to -- to basically say that employers can't take into account -- don't always have to take into account the criminal history for individuals. >> the ban of the box that we've seen in states. >> what that does, it institutionalizes forgiveness. that's something that we don't talk about very much when it comes to policy and when it comes to politics. everybody understands the power of personal forgiveness. it's a big thing in somebody's personal life. especially when it comes to criminal just issues, you see

this in in bankruptcy. >> is this about paying off one's debt? >> america has an incredibly forgiving bankruptcy standard. one of the most forgiving standards in the developing world. in europe, they think the standard is crazy because it basically allows you to go to a judge and say, "i can't pay this off." and the judge says, "you can't? all right, okay." and so what we end up with is a system that forgives people and allows them to have a fresh start. and that is something that is hugely powerful when you aplay it systematically. and that's a big part of what rand paul is looking at. >> your point that we have forgiving bankruptcy law and we have, you know, as you point out, 45 -- individual con scenes for having ever been incarcerated, i mean, was their answer, the answer both gave about race sufficient for you? it certainly felt to me like, well, there's a reason why bankruptcy law is more forgiving than criminal law. >> i thought their answer was fascinating, and that they are both doing more than most members of the senate on this

issue. >> yes. but the way, as you saw, they're framing it, avoiding getting into whether it's deliberately racist. my answer -- i'm not them, but my answer is there are parts of our enforcement of the drug war that are racist, and there are parts that are inadvertently unfair that may not seek to be racist. on the criminal background check example, we know there are uniform laws that are applied equally, requiring the people have to say that they have their rap sheet, right? then we know that employers individually have discriminated based on information more against african-americans than against others. >> i want to point out, great date showing that white men with a criminal record get more interviews and callbacks for jobs than black men without one. stick with us. much more -- i know, the commercial thing we have on this show. everyone, hang on. of course, we're not going to separate this issue from the school-to-prison pipeline. we'll come back, i'll have a brief conversation a motha moth about her 3-year-old getting

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our next guest has received a lot of attention for a recent and quite powerful peace she wrote for the "washington post" headlined "my son has been suspended five times. he's 3." jeannette powell's two sons have been suspended from their preschool a total of eight times this year. and their mother has reason to believe it might have to do with race. powell wrote, "i blamed myself. my past. and i would have continued to blame myself had i not taken the boys to a birthday party for one of j.j.'s classmates. one after another, white mothers confessed the trouble their children have gotten into. some of the behavior was similar to j.j.'s. some was much worse. most startling -- none of their

children had been suspended." this is not an isolated incident. it is not a problem of perception, but a need problem of racial disparity. here is attorney general eric holder in march. >> african-american students made up one in five preschoolers enrolled during the 2011/2012 school year. they accounted for half of all preschool students who faced more than one out-of-school suspension. not acceptable. >> joining me now from los angeles is jeannette powell, motivational speaker, author, and co-founder of "the truth heals," a nonprofit for women and children affected by fatherlessness. nice to have you this morning. >> thank you for having me. >> i'm sure that you've had many reactions as a result of you telling this story. tell me what those reactions have been for the most part. >> i think that they've been a combination of good and bad. obviously i've had a lot of people that have been very, very

supportive. i had lots of parents coming out and saying, you know what, i'm going through the exact same thing, and i don't know where to turn. but there have been some people who have really, really blamed me and said, you know, has nothing to to do with race. it's your kids. you have bad kids, and lets of things like that. that's been the difficult part. >> yeah. i completely get sort of how that happened. when you're telling an individual story, we've been just talking about whether or not we should use big data to make decisions. and so here you are telling an individual story. the easiest thing to do is to say this isn't about a system. this is just about your kids or your parenting or your school or your household. what makes you think that it is related to some bigger phenomenon? >> well, the reason why i know that -- because like you read a few minutes ago, that's not what i initially thought. i tried to blame myself. i looked inward. at a certain point where you're meeting other parents who are not african-american, and they're telling you that they could not believe that they even suspended at the preschool level

because of what their children already had done, it gave me no choice but to think, well, what's really going on. >> we did reach out to the school for comment but did not hear back from them. have you had a conversation with the school, and what are they saying in response to you? >> i have had several conversations with the school. and they weren't looking at the issue which is what i had a big problem with. they were look at we don't want to call it suspension. we want to say they took a break. these are when they weresect home for one--- were sent home for one-day suspensions. call it what you want. they said, i was asking, can you give me the data on how many suspensions you've had in 2014, and they were never able to give me that information. i tried to talk about what is their suspension policy because i want people to really think about what we're saying here. we're saying at 3 and 4 years old, there is a reason for you to be suspended and sent home at 3 and 4.

>> i wanting to to one of the thing you talked about in the piece, this -- this sense in your own life and then you wrote that you feel it beginning to happen in your sons' lives of being labeled and accepting one's self as bad. that you're bad, problematic, troubled at the core. is there a way this which preschool suspensions are creating on this for your boys? how are you trying to counter that as a parent? >> absolutely. i mean, it's the same as if you tell a kid they have a big head or they're going to believe that, right? it's the same thing where when -- especially with my 3-year-old because every tame he entered the school, the next day after being suspended, it wasn't a warm atmosphere. they weren't saying good morning, it is, what are you going to do, hope you had a better day today. he started to feel that and didn't want to go school. my kids at home, they play school. for them not to want to be in the school environment was disturbing to me. i kept continuously hearing them

ask about what was going on, wondering did they have to go to school. they started to figure out, you know, if i act bad i don't have to go to school. that's what it started to become. >> jeannette powell in los angeles, california. thank you for sharing your story. >> thank you. >> you took me to a core pain place with that big head comment. i really was -- teased a lot for the size of my head as a child. up next, the city with the new controversial curfew plan. , they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that's not a coincidence. it's one more part of our commitment to america. we're changing the way we do business, with startup ny.

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and helps dissolve stains, cleaning in a better way than brushing with toothpaste. that's why i recommend using polident. [ male announcer ] polident. cleaner, fresher, brighter every day. don't wait for awesome...ident. totino's pizza rolls... ...gets you there in just 60 seconds. we've been talking about sentencing reform, criminal justice system, and in that case, the school-to-prison pipeline where we hear that mom saying that her experience is the white children in school were not suspended for the same things her children were. do we begin criminalizing as early as 3 and 4? >> i don't think there's any master plan to criminalize children at any certain age. i think that t's much more subtle than that.

we have created this world where we have created the idea of the scary black man. imagine the young people going to school to be educators, somewhere in the back of their mind they have this idea that black men are more likely to be criminals than other people. they're going in to our school systems, and they're teaching little black boys. so subtly in the back of their minds, they're liable to look at little black boys differently, be more fearful. and that comes out in this insidious ugly ways that lady to the school-to-prison pipeline which is a -- there's many stops starting with failed school policies beginning withy in child left behind. then the zero tolerance issues, then you have police in the hallways, then you want to segregate students into

disciplinary type school situations, that leads into the juvenile systems and the school-to-prison pipeline. it's more insidious than the master plan to send all 3-year-olds to prison. >> and you know, it need not be an intentional set of bad racially angst driven actors, it can be people with good intention that's generate racially disparate outcomes. >> right, the policy can be uniform or potentially fair. it can be applied in a discriminatory way. you're speaking to some of the biases that some people, not all educators, some may bring to the table. there is a larger policy framework, which is we have ten states in this country that try children in the adult court system. the redeem act, which you mentioned, showing the interview i did with rand paul and cory booker would try to push back on that which is interesting. there are many democracies that consider it completely inhumane that we would take children and try them as adults, there's a

big reason why we make that separation. and beyond whether you think that's a good idea, whether you think it's moral or not, there's the policy implication of taking people younger and younger and pushing them toward an adult system where they will clearly be hardened, less likely to be rehabilitated, much more likely to have higher residdicidivreci. if you take children and find them moldable and reform them rather than throwing them into an adult system where they are more likely to be victims inside the cell, more likely to be preyed upon, less likely to rehabilitate. >> whether we look at these practices that can be meant even to be good for kids. the city of baltimore introduced a new harsher curfew. a curfew that will have young, 14 to 16, have to be in by 10:00 p.m. on the one hand, the mayor of

baltimore is saying, look -- who's an african-american woman herself, saying this is to protect our children from the crime in the secretes. on the other hand, there is this high likelihood that you end up criminalizing kids for being out late. turning a criminal activity from a kind of normal kid practice. >> right. and as part of this, they're setting up community centers where there are police officers there kind of keeping watch on the kids. look, relative to putting these kids in jail, i'll take this any day, but this is a bad idea. and it's going to have bad consequences for -- two in particular. one is that it's going to really mess up relations between teenagers and cops in the communities because teenagers -- >> they're so good now. >> yeah. right. even more so, teenager are going view cops as that guy who's going to pick me uft jup just f being out. i'm not doing anything wrong, i'm on my block, i'm not doing anything wrong, and he's going to pick me up. the other thing, it's going to be used by cops as a pretext to

pick up kids who aren't doing anything wrong. that kid looks suspicious, whatever that is kid's doing. it's going to be used by cops that way. and that's going folks as bait relations. it's a -- ad bad relations. it's not something good for community/cop relations. >> is it because we don't know how to modify the police force? as we bring up the broken windows policy that we think contributed to the death of mr. garner. as we look at dropping crime rate and aggressive policing in these cities, is it because we simply don't think we have any alternative for engaging with one another except through a criminal -- except through a legal system? >> that's a good question. i think we've got -- come so far down this road that we can't remember a time when we've dealt with each other a different way. i mean, so i'm thinking about new york state and north carolina being the only two

states where you still throw children to the adult system. and new york state saying that every 16-year-old is an adult, right? where did we cross that line where we no longer dealt with children as children? i think it's similar to the question where do we cross the line where we no longer dealt each other at one human being to another human being? >> i'm wondering if the community centers were open beginning at 9:00 p.m. but it wasn't police officers there, like -- i'm wondering, do we even think of anything available for our public use other than our -- than our policinging? >> i would -- policing? >> i would pause that part of it is a goal of getting to some sort of perfect security state. like when people say this is an analogy, not the same thing, but when people talk about terrorism and say, well, we should have zero terrorist attacks. most of the world doesn't look it at that way. they would like to prevent them, but they don't have the idea

that that what security encompasses. the idea of broken windows and that you have to go after the little stuff and that would make sure the big stuff doesn't happen, that mens we're walking around to your point as potential criminals. if selling a cigarette or jaywalking or loitering or wearing baggy pants means you can be stopped, we can be stopped at any time, we put discretion at the individual officer over who gets stopped. when that's ugly, we have to go back to the policies at the root and say, you know, i don't want to be stopped and frisked for jaywalking. because i'm caucasian, it's unlikely i will be. it's unfair period. >> thank you to peter, ari, and vivian. ari and vivian are coming back. want to point everyone to ari's series "presumed guilty." you can find it on msnbc.com. imagine being sentenced to life in prison without parole at 15 years old for armed robbery. coming up, one young man's quest for a second chance. honey, look i got one to land. uh-huh.

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in 2010 the supreme court ruled in a case that except in the case of murder defendants under 18 could not be sentenced to life without parole. as a result, 129 inmate who were sentenced as juveniles to life sentences without the possibility of parole would have a chance to at least make their case for release. one of those prisoners is kenneth young who at age 15 received four consecutive life sentences for a series of armed robberies. the new "pov" documentary "15 to life," follows him as he makes his case for a new sentence. >> kenneth was 14 years old at the time of the first offense. >> over the counter, in your face, guns to the head. i'm not sure if kenneth young knew the consequences, frankly. at that age, they really don't. >> did you see kenneth coming

out? >> i don't know. the judge has total discretion. total discretion. >> "15 to life," will have the premiere on the pov series tomorrow at 10:00 p.m. on pbs. joining subcommittee nadine -- i failed. >> pecwenieza -- >> director and producer. she's also at the table back with reverend vivian nixon, executive director of college and community fellowship. i watched the film last night. it is horrifying and incredibly important. i want to hear a little bit from kenneth so that people will have a sense of how extraordinary this young man is despite the extremely difficult circumstances he finds himself in. let's take a listen to him talk about the 11 years he spent in jail. >> i have been incarcerated for 11 years, and i have taken advantage of every opportunity available for me in prison to better myself.

i have been a model prisoner while i've been incarcerated. i have been in educational programs, i have taken care of elderly inmates, i have worked with mental inmates. also i have learned that the condition of your mind creates a condition of your ways. so i strive every day for good standards. i am no longer the same person i used to be. >> so -- >> are kids different? >> well, the u.s. supreme court has said they are different. and two rulings in the last four years they've said that children have a remarkable capacity for change and rehabilitation. that's why they have to be given an opportunity for release. and juvenile life without parole, the use of that punishment, has been severely restricted in the last few years. >> and do you think that kenneth particular is different among children -- in other words, do you see something in him, having spent time making this film with him, that is unique? >> he's demonstrated that capacity to change. he's definitely not the same

person that he was at 14 and 15 when he committed these crimes with someone who is ten years older than him, and his mother's drug dealer at the time. his circumstances were unique, and most of these children, 60% that have a juvenile life without parole sentence, don't have access to reform programs, to rehabilitation or education programs. kenneth pursued that on his own. to his credit, he has changed, highs self-rehabilitate -- he's self-rehabilitated. >> yet we hear that despite the fact the supreme court told us children are different, despite the fact that kenneth himself appears to be different in his willingness to engage in finding a way to make some meaning out of a life that has been as much in prison now as it was before, here is what we hear from the judge -- talking about the certificates and diplomas that this young man has received. >> your certificates and diplomas that you provided to me

in your sentencing miranda, i appreciate that. congratulations to you. do you know what this demonstrates to this court -- it demonstrates that the department of corrections and your particular incarceration was appropriate and effective. >> response? >> i have a particular spot that gets touched by several of the themes we're talking about today. one theme being -- 2,500 young people incarcerated across this country serving life without parole, which i think is a moral injustice which matches no other. and the thing that people can't change -- redemption is a personal theme of mine.

i spent years in prison, and i know that redemption is real. and the poblssibility of transformation is real. i think this judge's words that your incarceration is necessary speaks to his own inability to see redemption as a real possibility. to see transformation as something that should liberate someone rather than keep them incarcerated. that's his own cross it bear if you want to say that. i don't know -- where we'd be as a nation if we can't get beyond this. there needs to be some kind of remedy in the states that are not abiding by the supreme court ruling it free these -- ruling to free these young people who have not committed murder, who

are serving juvenile life without parole. there needs to be a federal remedy to get these kids out of these facilities. i don't think any child should have serving life without parole no matter what they've done. in the case that there's a supreme court ruling saying that this is wrong, we've got to get these kids out of these facilities. >> i think it's -- it's important, i don't want folks to miss what you were saying there if they haven't seen the film yet. he committed the crimes with someone ten years older than him. no one was killed in the commission of the crimes. there's even a moment in which he has a maybe potentially positive role despite the negativity of being involved in an armed robbery. yet this individual judge has all discretion. is there a set of policy remedies possible for someone like kenneth? >> well, because of the u.s. supreme court decision now -- and it is affecting more than justice children who have committed non-homicide crimes, so even children who committed

murder, the u.s. supreme court said they have to be given the possibility of release based on demonstrated rehabilitation. the remedy coming down is through the legislatures. 29 states across the country are looking at reviewing sentencing laws and making sure that kids have the opportunity for review if they've been convicted of these serious crimes. >> i kept thinking through without, what w.h.o. is held accountable -- who is held accountable for the level of abuse and neglect for this kid, and it's not about wanting to incarcerate his mother for her bad acts, but the system allowed this child to fall through and ended up in the hands of this older gentleman who leads him to this bad place. as we go, thank you, for the piece, thank you, reverend, for being here. as we go, i don't want you to miss this. i want to leave listening to the

judge tell kenneth despite what he has done he simply does not deserve to be released. >> if i follow your attorney's request to release you today, i might as well give you a key to the city, a parade, and dinner at burnes. that would be an award, a gift that you will not get it from this court. you will not get it because you do not deserve it. >> thank you. the documentary airs tomorrow on pbs. [ yodeling plays ] worst morning ever. [ angelic music plays ] ♪ toaster strudel! best morning ever! [ hans ] warm, flaky, gooey. toaster strudel!

out for drinks, eats. i have very well fitting dentures. i like to eat a lot of fruits. love them all. the seal i get with the super poligrip free keeps the seeds from getting up underneath. even well-fitting dentures let in food particles. super poligrip is zinc free. with just a few dabs, it's clinically proven to seal out more food particles so you're more comfortable and confident while you eat. a lot of things going on in my life and the last thing i want to be thinking about is my dentures. [ charlie ] try zinc free super poligrip. okay, nerdland, which do you want first? good news or bad news? let's start with the bad which manes starting in texas where governor -- means starting in texas where governor perry once stated that banning abortion was his goal. last year as a step toward that goal, governor perry signed house bill 2 which con deigned some of the increasingly -- contained some of the increasingly common provisions that target abortion providers with unduly harsh and medically unnecessary restrictions.

according to a soon-to-be-published study, there's been a 13% decrease in the abortion rate in texas compared to last year. it's not clear if that is the result of less availability or reduced need for termination services. here's the really bad news, whole woman's health, a clinic run by guest amy heckstrom miller announced thursday that it will close its doors in austin. it is -- talking about challenging hb 2 in hopes of saving the location. and there was good news from mississippi of all places. this week the fifth circuit court of appeal ruled in favor of the jackson women's health organization. the only place where a woman can obtain a legal pregnancy termination in the entire state. for now, the fifth circuit ruling allows this little pink clinic to stay true to the sign

on its gate. "this clinic stays open." the court determined that a law intended to close the clinic was unconstitutional. just next door, though, republican lawmakers, governor bobby jindal, and a wave of disruptive protesters are trying to close down clinics in louisiana. and while the law and the protesters target abortion clinics, maybe it's because they don't know what these so-called abortion clinics actually do. we'll talk about that next. thank you daddy for defending our country. thank you for your sacrifice and thank you for your bravery. thank you colonel. thank you daddy. military families are uniquely thankful for many things, the legacy of usaa auto insurance can be one of them. if you're a current or former military member or their family, get an auto insurance quote and see why 92% of our members plan to stay for life.

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we have begun our time together of collective prayer and meditation, we were lifting up the beloveds whom we lost in our community the past two weeks. in a moment of silence, a voice came. we were all stunned. suddenly they realized, wait, that's not our script. so kind of in the midst of that silence, people started standing up and pulling off their button down shirts and revealing their

t-shirts of affiliation. and just being loud and disruptive and crying out malice and spewing hate. >> that was reverend deanna vanderver, at the first universalist church in new orleans, telling "the rachel maddow show" about anti-abortion protests that interrupted a service last week. first u.u. is where my mother of a member and often attended during her years in new orleans. that church hosted the groundbreaking ceremony for the new planned parenthood being constructed on the same street a few blocks away. the planned parenthood isn't slated to open until early 2015. last month, protest demonstrations began, led by operation save america which grut of the same operation rescue -- grew out of the same operation rescue that gained infamy 20 years ago during kansas' so-called summer of mercy. according to the "times picayune," the organization said it was encouraged by a new louisiana law that some say will likely shut down three of the five freestanding medical facilities in the state that

perform abortions. the new planned parenthood location is not solely an abortion clinic. indeed, it will be replacing an existing smaller planned parenthood clinic which doesn'tc which doesn't even provide abortions. the new location will provide health care for low-income expectant mothers, health care for sufferers and cervical and breast cancer screenings. they are opposing a medical facility that delivers critical health care to women in the community. back with me is ari melber, could host of "the cycle" and irin camron. is there something in our language that is given to us by opponents of reproductive

rights? >> well, a great victory of the anti-choice movement has been to separate abortion. the fact that these buildings are stand-alone buildings allows them a place to target. it would be harder for them to surround them and pierce these now falling buffer zones that exist. there's that aspect of it and because women's rights advocates have said we'll provide the care that nobody else will, part of it has to do with the reality teas of how segregated abortion has been and abortion is part of a ranging reproductive health services that women will have throughout their lives which might include having children, contraception, having a hysterectomy of which abortion is only one and, on the other hand, not apologizing for these clinics providing abortion and not being afraid to say

abortion, too. >> that notion of being scared, i'm thinking of the little pink clinic in mississippi that had a big victory and i'm wondering how that victory is given that in part it's almost exclusively a provider of abortion. that's what it exists to do in the entire state of mississippi. how important is it of a legal matter that it's allowed to stay open and stand? >> i think it's important as a legal matter because it creates the foundation to say that these things can operate as they are being restricted legislatively and in some court decisions. i echo the point. the whole idea of stigmatizing this practice, which is, let's not forget, a constitutional right -- >> at least as of now. >> protected. and so whether you like that you have a right to bear arms or not, usually in most other instances, when the court makes these kinds of rights and decisions, everyone gets in line. this is not always anti-legal

because many of the ways that people are peering and our legal and our courts, it's a very aggressive rear guard approach to undermine something that the court says should be our right. >> when you make that comparison to second amendment rights, in part because i'm thinking about how many places you can carry your gun now and how few places you can access abortion. i was thinking about this language of calling first unitarian church a sanctuary and language seems like it matters so much. and again, i'm still concerned that even as we want to claim abortion as something that we can say, that we have a right to, we also, nonetheless, want to expand that language so we're talking about reproductive rights and justice whether or not someone terminates a

pregnancy or whether someone has a right to get pregnant or any of those things. >> the way the supreme court has justified this right, it doesn't include access. for a woman in mississippi, it stays open. in texas, they have decided shutting down more than half of the clinics is not an undue burden because the supreme court said as said you can still drive four hours, you can go fast. it sort of shows the narrowness and lack of sort of consideration to justice to women and reality to say that's enough. you have all of these courts interpreting state laws that are meant to shut down access and then you have a reality of a person's life who lives somewhere next to an immigration checkpoint, where two clinics have shut down. what good is that on paper if a person can't access it? moving away from the existing rights structure that we have and thinking about, what does

access look like? what does justice look like? and that includes that whole spectrum. >> so as we've talked about language and access, part of what we have to think about is a social movement. i'm wondering, achlri, there is theory that as things get worse, the movements emerge. my mom used to be a member at the first unitarian church, people are riled up and are ready to go in maybe ways that they had not previously been. we will see a more reproductive movement? >> i think when people see the attacks on contraceptive access, that has galvanized people. people have said i can't believe they are coming for our contraception. >> the nonprofit organizations

following hobby lobby, including notre dame. also, the urge to reclassify contraception as abortion, i think people really see through that. >> i think that as well. i've looked to irin because she's been on the ground so much. >> i have to cut you guys off. >> roe v. wade was a political gift to republicans and destroying it in a practical way may bring back the backlash that you're talking about. >> my producer is saying, shut ari down. that's because the tv show is over. thank you to ari and irin. read irin's new piece on what could be the next hobby lobby. i have to get off right now. see you next saturday at 10:00 a.m. eastern. hi, alex. >> i feel like i have to say i'm sorry to irin. >> no, no. >> it's all about me now. this is what we're talking about, everybody. a fligrightening moment on the

court and a freak accident. today's question is, can he recover to play pro again? there we go. republicans in washington and the lawsuit they want to pursue against the president. and what is behind the strange toxin polluting toledo's water supply? and a new hbo special. don't go anywhere. i'll be right back. one little smile. one little laugh. honey bunny... (laughter) we would do anything for her. my name is kim bryant and my husband and i made a will on legalzoom. it was really easy to do. (baby noise...laughter) we created legalzoom to help you take care of the ones you love. go to legalzoom.com today and complete your will in minutes. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. then you'll know how uncomfortable it can be. [ crickets chirping ]

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