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tv   Melissa Harris- Perry  MSNBC  November 15, 2014 7:00am-9:01am PST

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their 10-year lipper average. t. rowe price. invest with confidence. request a prospectus or summary prospectus with investment information, risks, fees and expenses to read and consider carefully before investing. this morning my question, is there anyone not talking about kim kardashian this week? plus, what the billion-dollar divorce tells us about the value of women's work, and spotify. taylor swift and the battleground of intellectual property. but first, god versus science. let's get ready to throw down. >> good morning. i'm melissa harris-perry. we have a lot to get to this morning. but first, as ferguson, missouri, waits a decision from
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injury on whether or not to indict a police officer. they have new footage of wilson entering the police station after the haug shooting. the post dispatch obtained record gds of police calls and reports that the fatal encounter happened in less than 90 seconds. also overnight, ferguson police chief tom jackson told our st. louis affiliate that if the grand jury does not return an indictment, officer wilson may immediately return to duty. but he says wilson could be fired if there is an indictment. a decision could come in day now. joining us now from ferguson, missouri, msnbc's trumain lee. not only the audio and video, but specifically what the chief said about the possibility of him returning to work? >> reporter: good morning. right now it's a cold, quite morning in ferguson, as everyone is still on pins and needles waiting for word of the grand
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jury's decision. the audio and video recording don't add much. you get a chance to watch him and see him moving in and out for the very first time in live motion. the idea that darren wilson if not indicted could return to the streets will certainly cause controversy. the legal democrat will determine if the prosecution could move forward. but in the community, he's guilty. i'm sure he'll be guilty once the jury makes the decision. he'll be guilty after that. the idea that he'll return to the the community is fuel on the the community that's been on fire for more than 90 days so far. >> trimaine, that's really useful. thank you for helping us with that. there's guilt by a legal system, but there's also a question of perception and emotion within the context of community.
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trymaine lee in ferguson, missouri, thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me. >> now to breaking space news. on wednesday a small spacecraft landed on a comet. the first time scientists accomplished such a fete. the european space agency launched the craft philae more than 10 years ago. it traveled more than 4 trillion miles. the target, a block of ancient ice and cosmic debris 2.5 miles long and speeding through space at 75,000 miles an hour. on wednesday it landed, and it's already sent back photographs of the comet's surface. that's where technology is today. a spacecraft is riding a comet 317 million miles from earth. it took ten years to get there, and it's able to send pictures that reach earth in less than half an hour. the scene at the esa on wednesday was one of jubilation.
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so it's a real accomplishment. but it leads us to ask, well, why? why do this? why spend ten years and almost $2 billion sending a little box hundreds of millions of miles into space to see what a comet looks like up close? to borrow a phrase from fred whipple, it's just a big dirty snowball, isn't it? one, it's just kind of freaking cool, and two, scientists are hoping to learn more about the beginnings of life. comets are thought to this be the oldest bodies of the solar system. leftover from when it was formed 4.5 billion years ago. a time when huge masses of gases and rocks were hurdling into each other all the time and you know, making the planets. a major question from the time is how did earth get its water? water is not only essential to life now, but it is also likely
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the oceans is where life first began on this planet. somed comets, the giant speeding snowballs that slammed into the earth and became the ocean. science is searches for answers. some hints, at least, to some of the enormous questions from the surface. and one of them is how did life on earth begin? the beginning of life is one of the biggest unanswered questions in science. another one, how did the universe begin? what sparked the big gang? beginnings, or put another away, creation with a capital "c." science is one way of seeking answers in what seems like chaos. religion is another. consider the opening texts of the book of genesis. in the beginnings the god created the heavens and the earth. now the earth was formless and empty. darkness was over the surface
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and god said, let the water you should the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear, and so it was. god called the dry ground land and the gathered waters he calleded the seas and god said let there be lights in the vaults of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred signs and days and years. he also made the stars. god set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, and god saw that it was good. science and religion in this case, christianity, may have very different creation stories, but that doesn't mean they're mutually exclusive. take it from this guy. the people's pope himself made headlines when he said, quote, the beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origins to something else, but drives from a supreme principle that creates out of love. the big bang that is today considered to be the origin of
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the world does not contradict the creative intervention of god. on the contrary, it requires it. the pope spoke about evolution. evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of creation. because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve. this is not a radical departure from the catholic church. previous popes have said the scientist theory of evolution does not necessarily contradict the church's seeking on creation. but the vatican has a pretty bad wrap when it comes to science. you condemn the scientific findings of one dude named galileo and you can't live it down for 400 years. is there an epic struggle between religion and science? must one vanquish the other? or can the coexist? or perhaps as the pope suggested, support and enrich each other. joining us now, bill nye.
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oh, i was like, wait a minute. i don't think that's the title. yolanda, associate professor at princeton theological theater. and michael pepper, theology professor and contributor for common wield magazine. maybe i'll start with you, have been flubed the title. because there's a creation very sus creationism discourse that sets up this dichotomy. >> well, you tell me. one of the great discoveries in evolution. when we have organizations like msnbc or the catholic church, it's top down. it's 6-1. it's top down. there's somebody at the top. and he or she has people working for him or her. that's not how nature works apparently. instead it's bottom up. this is to say you have a bunch of designs. you see which make it to the next generation. and that's where we all are today. so it's a different way of
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organizing things. so you could argue there that these things are separate and have nothing to do with each other. but the problem, everybody, comes when up religious beliefs that you want to tell other people how to live and so on, and then you get to disagreements in the middle east, in ireland, in south america, people disagree about these details. >> so i love the idea that creation in the context of evolution is somehow socialist and that creation in the context of religion is some thousand aauthoritarian. . that's just my political science behind. >> you couldn't have this coffee mug without an organization. without a corporation. i mean, you can't just have -- just go ahead and start messing around. there has to be top down some place. this is how humans get things done in large groups. there's tribes and leaders of tribes. that's all good. but in the big, big picture,
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evolution is a bottom-up process. >> as much as i love hearing you read the bible, it brings joy to my heart, i was thinking there's a small vocal minority of people that are troo iing to say there's no space for there to be distinctful faith and science. i think the vast majority of us love science. and the bible, we understand it not to be a science textbook, right? that it isn't trying to tell us, you know, the origins of the universe. it's trying to point to something. and as i was thinking about this comet, right? and what it reveals and the awe and the mystery, that's something that science and religion share. so instead of creating this dichotomy, i think it's just a very small, unfortunately vocal minority that's trying to say, wow, how can we talk about these two contradictory things? we've always talked about them. >> okay, so michael, i want to push on this a little bit. precisely what yolanda laid out
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here. the sense of awe seems to be animating forces of most world religious practices and of the scientific method. but the challenge it seems to me, that's a quite important one, is what counts as evidence? and so that in the context of faith, there are faith-based claims that do not require empirical evidence to hold them. but in the con terks of science, there must be empirical evidence in order to falsify or confirm a claim. >> that's right. in a christian tradition we would say there are multiple valid ways of knowing. and scientists links to one valid way of knowing. and that serves as a benefit to society. in fact a christian tradition, we are not anti-scientists. i know you said galileo.
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and that's an easy one. but george is the founder of the big bang theory. he's a belgian priest. he just recently receiveded a medal. a vatican astronomer, holder of themeteorite. >> if that's in part because of the organization that institutes the catholic church. and the the relatively more democratic with a "d" version of particularly american conservative religious thought. sat on a stage. that seems not incompatible. and then it does begin to feel like that. >> in since we evaluate claims. so if someone claims the earth
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is 6,000 years old, there is nothing to support that idea. and so my concern, as i may have mentioned many times is young people. you don't want to raise a generation of science students that doesn't understand the idea of evolution. natural selection, sexual selection, analogy, all these fabulous things. so that's where it crosses the line for me. they have a big curriculum. they have dvds. they have quizzeses that look just like science. and so, it's this abandoning your critical thinking skills. abandoning your ability to reason that is trouble. >> so when we come back, i want to talk about this question of young people and how we balance skepticism that science gives us and the value of hope and faith that comes to us from religious practice together into one soup generation of post millennials.
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in his essay "message in the stars." the minister conducts a thought experiment. what if god decided to prove dramatically irrefutably that god does exist? by arranging the stars to read god is. he imagines the hope and terror, regret and joy that such a message would bring. he fantasizes that god would rewrite the message in all the the different languages in the world so on my given night you might go up and see it in french or arabic, god is. and then he imagines this, i would have a child look up at the sky some night, just a plain, garden variety child with perhaps a wad of bubble gum in his cheek. i would have the child turn to his father or maybe with the crazy courage of childhood, i would have him turn to god, and
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the words i would have him speak would make the angels gasp. so what if god exists, he would say? is what difference does that make? the essay is a reminder to me in the struggle between religion and science, most people are not seeking the message of the stars, but instead want to understand what difference those answers make. what does it all mean, and how are we supposed to live with one another? so that's part of what i wanted to come to you on. let's talk about just the environment to begin with. >> sure. so if i am to believe that god is the creator, does that change my relationship of either dominion or stew wardship towards the earth? in other words, what difference does that make? >> if we are to move towards climate action and social injustice, care for the poor, religious communities are going to have to be involved, and not just progressive ones, but conservative ones as well. religious groups have shown,
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starting with especially the civil rights movement in the united states that coherent narratives and cohesive communities that religious communities can bring about are essential to any kind of social change in the united states. i think that's starting to happen. and not to be too catholic here. we want to say the pope is writing on ecology. this is unbelievable. really. if you think of what you may imagine a pope to do. he's reading, what is the problem presented to humanity in my time, my few years here as pope. and the problem is one of environmental degradation. he's trying to deal with it. >> and that feels like part of the residual value that remains, no matter what one's claims, empirical claims about the capacity to organize activity
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towards justice or towards inequality. we also know religion has a long history of promoting and creating inequality. so part of what i'm thinking is, do we want to give our children a god to strive towards in order to do good, or eliminate a god divisive on identity? >> it's the question of do we have to make a choice, right? so do we want to affirm that -- it's called faith for a reason. it's not certainty. it's faith. you believe. you hope. you wish. you pray. but do we also want space for proof and empirical evidence? we want to give our children both. we want them to have the mystery, the wonder, the the awe. the awesomeness tos a spire to something something beyond and above them, even as we want them grounded in the the tools to do that. i want children to aspire to be astronauts, right? wouldn't that be a cool job? wouldn't it be great to be bill nye the science guy? i want them to have a sense of
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calling and vocation, that god put me on the earth to do something and that i'm important and unique and i can be a steward of this earth. instead of creating contradictory spaces, i want to create a space to allow both to be a part of the conversation. >> and bill, in your book, you really think of children as being the sort of what's at stake? we were looking at this politico story from march that is talking about the vouchers going to private school ls. these vouchers go to schools where they nurture disdain of the secular world. distrust of momentous discoveries and hostilities towards mainstream scientists. they distort the basic facts, teaching that theory is highly speculative because they haven't been elevated. >> people confuse the words laws and theorys. it's bombshell time. so for me as a scientist, it sounds like what you're trying
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to do is take your religion and get it to fit in science and understanding. i'm not the first guy to point this out. altruism, community, tribalism exists in species way less complicated than humans. the argument you have to are religion in order to be philanthropic, in order to care about your fellow species, person. that is reasonable, but i don't think it's backed by a scientific observation. so we have disagreement here. we will not mix church and state. right? so i am all for engages religious communities. clearly people get so much support e out of their communities and stuff. but the claim that we have an issue with is that because religion provides this h community, therefore we have to have religion, furthermore, we have to have my specific
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religion. and then to get to these school people. the vouchers are just a way to -- as scientists -- i just wonder. is there really no evidence that there's a transformative capacity for religious belief in the human life that can't be accounted for purely through the kind of empirical evidence we typically think of. >> you tell me. so here's the bat flying around at night. doesn't get enough to eat. comes back to the roost. the other bats regurgitate with their mosquito barf and the other lives through the night. why do they do that? the pope is given them an authorization. or because it's deep within them and if they don't, they eliminate too many genes. >> you have to stay afterwards.
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it's a huge question. thank you to bill nye and michael pepper. everyone, be sure to check out bill's new book, undeniable evolution and the science of creation. somehow we're going to make the transition from god and science to the photo of kim kardashian that broke the internet. stay with us. it's going to be quite a show. woman: everyone in the nicu -- all the nurses wanted to watch him when he was there 118 days. everything that you thought was important to you changes in light of having a child that needs you every moment.
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over the summer america's biggest tech companies showing industry to be overwhelmingly white and male explain the diversity problem, in part by pointing to the challenges posed by the pipeline problem. now that's the claim that there are too few people of color on the employment end of science, technology and math fields because too few students of color are learning in the classroom.
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they are bringing young people together with the brightest minds in the tech industry. right now, the reid report and nerd land friend joy reid. i hear you're really into this. basicity background for this is yes we code. that's an initiative that came out of a conversation in the wake of the trayvon martin case between prince, that prince, and van jones. and prince asked van jones, come come when you see a young black man in a hoodie, you see a thug, when you see a white man in a hoodie you see mark zuckerberg. so the challenge was to create 100,000 tech ready young black men from low-income communities. they did this hack-a-thon in
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california. they got kids together. they had them learn to make apps. then, of course, when a good idea happens people come and they latch onto it. so the my brother's keeper initiative and can you come to philly and do one with us. they said, this is the app that i would create. i'm going to walk over and introduce you to durad, faro and i have name alzheimer's. what's the name of the app? cyc. you see abandoned buildings, buildings falling apart. use the app to take a picture of it. it will give you ideas on how to redevelop it. that can allow communities to thrive. it's a great idea. this is a great idea. we want to latch on. it's really the code doing the initiative.
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>> thank you to joy reid in philadelphia, pennsylvania. up next, taylor swift's rebellion. [singing to himself] "here she comes now sayin' mony mony". ["mony mony" by billy idol kicks in on car stereo] ♪don't stop now come on mony♪ ♪come on yeah ♪i say yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪'cause you make me feel like a pony♪ ♪so good ♪like your pony ♪so good ♪ride the pony the sentra, with bose audio and nissanconnect technology. spread your joy. nissan. innovation that excites. [singing] ♪mony mony you'rbam!ean. charmin ultra strong cleans so much better it meets even the highest standards of clean. with a soft duraclean texture, charmin ultra strong is 4 times stronger. and you can use up to 4x less.
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♪ let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together ♪ ♪ i've got some real estate here in my bag ♪ ♪ it took me four days to hitch-hike from saginaw ♪ ♪ "i've come to look for america" ♪
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normally in nerd land if we are going to pay attention to any pop star, you know it's going to be our girl beyonce. but this week we had to set our si sights on a different star, who if we are measuring by album sales alone is bigger than our beloved beyonce. taylor swift already made news this month when in a year that had so far not seen a single album reach platinum status, she became the first and only recording artist to reach the million mark. her fifth album, 1989, sold 1.287 million copies by the end of its first week of sales. in late october. and a sound scan reported one week of sales represented 22% of all album sales in the u.s. taylor's singular success in a music industry that has been
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struggling with shrinking sales prompted both "time" magazine and bloom berg business week to make her the cover girl this month. and it has given her the influence to change the conversation about how we all consume music. she decided last week to yank her entire catalog from music streaming service, spotify. streaming is on track to outpace cds and downloads, projections of a music revenue rebound driven in large part by streaming subscriptions have made the industry look to services like spotify, potentially as a saving grace. but those assumptions will be interrupted by taylor's decision. which as she explained was both a business and artistic choice saying i think there should be an inherent value placed on art. i didn't see that happening perception wise when i put my music on spoti if, y. everybody is claning that music seams are shrinking. nobody is changing the way they are doing things.
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they don't have any settings or qualifications for who gets what music. i feel that people should -- and i think people should feel there is a value to what musicians have created. and that's that. joaning my now, danielle smith, author and founder of culture magazine. and the host of citizen radio and coauthor of the new book " #newsfail." help us understand what streaming is. how that is different. >> the best way you can explain is when you're down loading a song, buying it and when you're listening to a spotify service, you're ruining the experience. taylor says listen, this is your experiment. i'm an artist. i want to be valued. i don't want to be a party to your experiment as you try to figure out how best to sell or
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allow people to experience my music. >> so it's an interesting position to have. jamie, part of the reason i wanted you at the table for this is when i think about people experimentally delivering content, i mean citizen raid is right there. it's not really on a radio channel, right? >> right. >> and i'm working in a cable news industry. so people are starting to think about what we should do differently, right. so it seems like this should be exactly what artists want. >> yeah. thank you for saying that's why you have me on and not because i'm a taylor swift superfan, which i'm the whitest person you know at the moment because i'm so excited to talk about her. the problem is this. i think people would get mad at taylor swift because she's so rich and she doesn't need the the money. right? but the problem is when young artists try to rebel and say take me off spotify. okay. they're just losing audience. but experimentation is good when you're in charge of the
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experiment. alison, my partner in radio is a great artist if we didn't have this podcast, which we created by ourself, which is listener supported, we would still be in a studio apartment in queens. it would be really rough. the problem is the young indie garage band on spotify isn't getting the money. it's the ceo. >> it's interesting you make the distinction between taylor swift. she's done something. and with the low-key way of doing it. but i understand that you think part of her power to do is because she comes out of country. she's fully pop and comes out of country. >> they are serious business. they still go to the store and buy hard cds. they're anging out with your mom. they are going in there. and think want the jewel box. they want the the experience and
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the sexual cd. slide it in the car. that's what they want to do. be now taylor is part of a -- it's a dying breed of pop star. she's become a pop star at the time that most people are calling it the end of pop stars period. it's just beyonce. it's just taylor. cold play didn't go platinum this year. it's very hard right now to get people to buy music. spotify or spotify like platforms, is that the way? i don't know. >> it feels to me then like, on one hand we're talking about spotify and music, but it's an also an intellectual property rights. for folks who are writers in the context of the end of books. for people delivering speeches at a time when anybody can youtube you and put your speech out there. like, is there a new way we should be thinking about what constitutes intellectual or artistic property and new ways we ought to think about protect it? >> yeah, that's a really good point that you made. u2 had to break into people's
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itunes to put their music on this year. i signed something that put all my albums on spotify. and when i get my royalties. they did really well this year. and if they listen to it on s t spotify or itunes, i have an employee come to my house and take a piece of furniture. i want my music to get out there. if i'm doing ha show and there's a fan with no money, i will give them the cd and say please burn this for your friends. so i'm fine with word of mouth. i'm fine with getting this out there. but i'm on my terms. >> which is different than somebody else getting rich on your artistic capacity. >> the essential question right now is how much is music worth? what is it worth? and if it's not going to be worth money that can pay for studio time and food, that can
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pay for heat at an pardon apart then will people continue to make it? what does that mean for music and fans? >> and what does it mean for the culture? that's a great big question. i love that. jamie will be back in the next hour. still to come this morning, kim kardashian is citational. don't worry. i'm going to explain. but up next, my letter of the week. what does an apron have to do with car insurance? an apron is hard work. an apron is pride in what you do. an apron is not quitting until you've made something a little better. what does an apron have to do with car insurance? for us, everything. (receptionist) gunderman group is growing. getting in a groove. growth is gratifying.
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could something that small make an impact on something as big as your retirement? i don't think so. well if you start putting that towards your retirement every week and let it grow over time, for twenty to thirty years, that retirement challenge might not seem so big after all. ♪ last week emery university suspended all fraternity social activity after a woman reported being raped at a fraternity halloween party. here on mhp, we have reported about the many universities under fire for their failure to respond adequately to sexual assault on their campuses. emery responded swiftly. the interfraternity counsel issued a statement that read in part, this pause will give our community time to re-evaluate
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how we address the intolerable issues of sexual violence, substance abuse and discrimination on our campus. they are setting a standard of how to respond the to epidemic of sexual assault on campus. lincoln university transformeded itself to an icon of failure. as a result of the words of the president in september, his words became public this week. >> we handled this campus last semester, three cases of young women, who after having done whatever they did with the young men, and then it didn't turn out the way they wanted it to turn out, guess what they did? they then went and said he raped me. #. >> and he was not done. he went onto say this. >> don't put yourself in a situation that would cause you
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to be trying to explain something that really needs to explanation had you not put yourself in that situation. >> and that is why my letter of the week goes to lincoln university president robert jennings. dear president jennings, it's me, melissa. i know after a firestorm of comments you issued an apology. you wrote, mismessage was intended emphasize personal responsibility and mutual respect. i apologize for my choice of words. i certainly did not intend to hurt or offense anyone. personal responsibility, well, how about you take personal responsibility for failing your students? your words show an utter lack of respect or empathy for the women who pay up to $11,000 a year to seek an education at lincoln university. women who come to college expecting an opportunity to learn and grow. women who are protected under title 9 of the education amendments of 1972, which
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ensures that all students are able to pursue their educational goals free of violence, harassment and hostility and mandates that when a college knows about a hostile environment, they must take immediate action to eliminate it. president jennings, it's you who created the hostile environment. when you blamed women for sexual assault and implied they regularly lie about rape. what you said was offensive, appalling and wrong. a woman always has a right to say no. it doesn't matter if it's late, she's in his room, if they've been on a date, even if they have had sex before. a woman has a right to say no. if she's forced to have sex when she says no, it is rape. and a woman must actually say yes. l if she's been drinking and can't say yes, if she's unconscious and can't say yes, if she's sick and can't say yes, if she's being threatened or hurt and can't say yes and she's still forceded to have sex, it
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is rape. when you suggest otherwise in such a public setting, and when you take a more than two months to offer a halfhearted apology, president jennings, not only are your words shockingly ignorant, but also your words disgrace the legacy of your school, lincoln university, our nation's first degree granting historically black college and your words undermine the legacy of lincoln al alumnist thurgood marshall. he was seeking justice, rather than offering excuses for those predatory. they used language to give voice to those who are rarely heard, rather than silence them with accusations and blame. speaking of silence -- now that was just five seconds of silence. five seconds maybe of confusion. five seconds of wondering when
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words would be spoken again. five seconds of feeling uncomfortable. five seconds of worrying what would happen next. president jennings, you implied an accusation of rape can ruin a young man's life. maybe what you need to think about is what an act of rape with do to a young woman's. you should be held account for encouraging survivors to be silent. for telling them they would not be believed. they would be suggested to your scrutiny and disrespect. five seconds changed this letter. what do you think a lifetime of silence does to a life? sincerely, melissa. ♪ [ woman ] i will embrace change... everything life throws my way. except for frown lines. those i'm throwing back. [ female announcer ] olay total effects. nourishing vitamins, and seven beautiful benefits in one. for younger-looking skin. so while your life may be ever-changing... ♪ ...your beautiful skin will stay beautiful.
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according to justice department statistics, the majority of sexual assaults in this country go unreported. part of the reason may be because of how the issue is handled by police. a new report finds that police in new orleans failed to properly investigate hundreds of reports of sex crimes.
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they inspecteded nearly 1300 cases assigned to five police officers between 2011 and 2013. they were designated as miscellaneous with no further action taken. no report, nothing. but there was no supplemental information beyond the first brief initial report. and only 179 cases, 14% of the sexual assault or child abuse calls were followed up on with reports. they do not identify the five officers, but it does detail the cases one detective identified only as detective "a" was assigned to 13 cases of potential sexual abuse involving minors. 1 of the cases had no follow-up information beyond the initial report, including a case involving a toddler brought to the emergency room after an alleged sexual assault.
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the report says a review of the victim's medical records reveal the juvenile under 3 years old had a sexually transmitted disease. however, detective "a" wrote the victim did not disclose any information to warrant a criminal investigation and closed the case. according to a report, another detective identified as detective "d" told at least three different individuals that detective "d" did not believe that simple rape should be a crime. the five officers in the report have been reassigned and the new orleans police superintendent says the investigators will determine if the officers should face discipline or criminal charges. but what about the alleged victims whose quest for help went unanswered? joining me now? deon haywood, a new orleans based community organization dedicated to improving the lives of marginal women. dion, i'm wondering if you think this tells us anything beyond new orleans? is this a new orleans problem or
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ha problem about the diminishment about the importance of rape as a crime in police departments? >> no, i agree. i think it's the way we as a society in this country look at rape. we keep talking rape culture. so many things promote rape culture that those of us fighting against it can't get a heads up. so this is just a symptom of what's happening across the country. >> obviously we've been in an ongoing kofrgs since august and brought up by the events in ferguson, missouri, about the lack of trust between community and police forces. how has this be received any my beloved new orleans? what are people saying about this? >> we know new orleans. what we have all experienced for years. many of us are not shocked, by
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angry. what's more shocking is the number of children nameded in this report makes it more shocking. >> yeah, the detective "a" who doesn't follow up on the one story of sexual assault, but all these other circumstances and an infant brought to the emergency room with a skull fracture. the emergency room nurse suspected nonaccident dal trauma. but the detective didn't conduct an investigation. simply closed the case. >> right. right. sot many of us are trying to figure out what went wrong? what was happening that any human being could ignore the pain and abuse of a child? and not investigate. we can say it's from the top down. who didn't do what? who didn't follow through?
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but we have seen in the pags. how they have treated the women, the members of the immigrant community and african-american men. but this one really stands out because it was children. and still we got the same results. >> part of this is we got to put the victimization, the survival of women in circumstances like sexual assault more at the forefront of our public community activism as we're trying to work around questions of police and community. >> we do. we do. you know, the fact that i don't think nopd or most police departments have a gender analysis. they don't have one. and i think it's going to be important moving forward for them to get one. how they do that, i think we're going to have to work closely with organizations like the the new orleans family justice center, metropolitan women with a vision. you know, we're all working really hard here. we have the sexual assault response team.
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and it's been going really well. and we're all excited about the outcome. we just need nopd to do better. >> yes. ch absolutely. thank you to deon haywood in new orleans, louisiana. ch. >> thank you. >> still to come this morning, her share after the divorce was $1 billion. but she says she deserves more. assessing a woman's worth. more nerd land at the top of the the hour. [ telephone rings ] [ shirley ] edward jones. this is shirley speaking. how may i help you? oh hey, neill, how are you? how was the trip? [ male announcer ] with nearly 7 million investors... [ shirley ] he's right here. hold on one sec. [ male announcer ] ...you'd expect us to have a highly skilled call center. kevin, neill holley's on line one. ok, great. [ male announcer ] and we do. it's how edward jones makes sense of investing. ♪ it's how edward jones makes sense of investing. i have a cold with terrible chest congestion. better take something. theraflu severe cold doesn't treat chest congestion. really? new alka-seltzer plus day powder rushes relief to your worst cold symptoms
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all around the world the dedicated people of united airlines ♪ are there to support you. ♪ that's got your back friendly. ♪ welcome back. i'm melissa harris-perry. it's one of the largest divorce judgments in u.s. history. early this week, the ex-wife of oklahoma oil man harold hamm was awarded nearly $1 billion in cash and assets. the oklahoman newspaper says the precise amount is more like $995 million. but you get the idea. we're talking about a billion dollar divorce here. now she will be one of the richest women in america. still, she plans to appeal the judgment, seeking more money she feels she's entitled to. that billion dollars is a mere
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fraction of her ex-husband's wealth. he is worth an estimated $13 billion, according to forbes. that $13 billion figure is based on hamm's owner ship of 253 million shares. he gets to keep the stock. but he has to pay sue ann by the end of the year. was it expertise and skill or more passing circumstances? a bit of plain old good luck? you see, according to oklahoma state law where this case played out a spouse is entitled to money a partner earns. this distinction left hamm and his company trying to portray the ceo. a man named one of time magazine's most influential people in the the world as someone who stumble ed into success so the the judge in the case would limit the amount of marital capital to split between the two parties.
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it all gets to how much one's spouse is responsible for the success of the other. now it brings to mind this moment for me. zblf if you are successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. there was a great teacher somewhere in your life. somebody helped to create this unbelievable american system that we have that allowed you to thrive. somebody invest eed in roads an bridges. if you got a business, you didn't build that. somebody else made that happen. >> you see, that was president obama back on the campaign trail in 2012, saying no business succeeds in a vacuum isolated from the public services that provide the necessary support, allowing that business to engage with the rest of the world. but whether it's from the government in the the form of infrastructure or education or customers.
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how did you make yourself? it's that question that makes the divorce proceedings more than a dallas soap opera style sensation. sue an hamm worked as an torrent as her husband's campaign. she left in 2008 and helped to traz the couple's two children. how exactly does one determine what is the value furthermore, how will the value be recognize? is joining us now, profess soft sor at at the university of pennsylvania and cofounder of "a long walk home." vicky zeigler, who is celebrity divorce attorney and ceo of divorcedating.com. and kira, vice president of digital con r content for ebony
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magazine. thank you all for being here. i want to start with the divorce attorney because it feels like the argument about you didn't build that by yourself. there's a value of the other spouse that has to be accounted for. >> absolutely. all day long. the problem is there's no real formula. nobody can i say i cooked every day for you. we had relations each week. unfortunatelily judges sit there trying to apply to law and take the facts. it doesn't aullways work to somebody's advantage. almost a billion dollars is not enough for me. i'm sorry. i'm filing an appeal because i'm worth more. the question becomes do they do something differently? does a three-panel judge say wait a second, we see this differently. all of your hard work necessarily affected the
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increase? or was it not his role? it was team work. it was the assets done before, the decision making before they got married so she's not entitled to 50% structure of the company. >> it can be hard to feel the angst for sue ann. you said it's hard to put a value on it. on what a homemaker's real salary would be. $96,000 a year for an ordinary person living their life as a homemaker. certainly her billion dollars. but less that, this model that is gold digger. and if a woman is married to a wealthy man or a man wealthier than her, she's necessarily a gold digger as opposed to she's part of the mine creating the gold.
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>> my girlfriends and mine joke that we all need a wife. who doesn't need a wife to succeed? you cannot quantify the value of support. support at home is really the underpinning. anyone who has been in a relationship, in a marriage understands inherently what the value is of that kind of connection and daily support. it's a kickstand for your life so you don't become a billionaire by accident without this woman giving you 26 years of her life, two children. there's no question she's entitled to at least whatever the standard is. >> so on one hand we have that. i want to trouble that with the foundational feminist texts. we think of the second sex and the the idea is marriage is along a continuing prostitution.
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because they're able to have the same economic standing as men have to trade their nurturing, their care and their sex to men because that's how our economic system is set up. so marriage is inherently troubling. there's a way we all want to hold onto the joy of companion. and it starts soundsing like that argument. >> yeah. i think both are true. the idea of heterosexual marriages being part of a patriar patriarchal contract is true. what i think is interesting about this case is two things. she did work for the company for 20 years. imagine if the employees sued him for equal compensation to his own worth, right? that's a different strategy. >> what about the other folks,
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right? >> yeah, that's what the the obama quote made me think of. they didn't have a prenup agreement. maybe they didn't think about it. maybe they thought their marriage would last forever. or maybe when they got married his stand gds wasn't what it is now. he was a mid level executive on the rise. there's no way to fully quantify what she has given to him. but over time, and this is part of the idea about whether it was his skill or pure luck, over that time he made significant purchases. grew economically. and part of the process. but intellectually and socially and culturally. i'm not one who thinks that when it comes to these cases these women shouldn't get anything. i think it should be fair and equal. and if he was really concerned, imagine his employees actually suing him. >> and i didn't think i had anything to say on this story. i hope she bankrupts every oil
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man. when i first read it, who do i hate more? an oil man or the wife of? oil man. give her more money if she promises she can only invest in solar. i don't know. but it is true. if i was single, i would be living in an ally with a sign that's like, we'll tell jokes for hugs and pizza. just the days it doesn't matter how successful you are. you go home and you're sad and you need someone to go in the next day. this guy seems like a sort of cartoonish oil man. i'm glad he's losing his money. >> we're going to stay on this and bring someone who has been to her own divorces. we're going to bring in the kim kardashian picture that broke the skbernt. i want to stay on this a little bit. we'll talk about what assets
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we've been discussing the economic value of a domestic partnersh partnership. splashed on the cover of paper magazine this week, kim kardashian's impossiblily tiny waist and her favorite asset. it didn't quite break the internet. but it revealed much about what has the potential to send folks into a tizzy. kim kardashian understands what she's able to sell, and sell she does. this week the online publication reports why kim kardashian is the world's best marketer. instead of breaking the internet, she's breaking the
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bank. she has more than 25.4 million twitter followers, 21.5 million on instragram who have undoubtedly contributed to her $45 million personal wealth. those eye popping figures are a direct result of her relentlessly marketing her image and her brand. even if you don't look at the paper photos in the past day, erp likely aware of the existence and probably talked about them. once again, kim wins. no matter how hard you may try, you cannot ignore her. kardashian critics are also hard toing ing gnore. an op-ed says she doesn't realize she's the butt of an old racial joke. the photographer of kim's latest photo shoot is jean paul and the champagne photo, the creation of caroline beaumont in 1976. the iconic photo was found in his book, titled jungle fever.
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that book and other works of his have been criticized for fetishizing black women's bodies. still, love kim kardashian or hate her, it's hard to deny she's marketed herself well beyond her initial 15 minutes of reality storm fame. i have been having all kinds of feelings about this. it feels connected to me in that you can't break the internet with a new book written by by a woman. and yet she could. there she is trafficking in the thing she can traffic in. >> there are several issues at play. on one hand you have a woman who has figured out her marketing ability and tied it to her rear end. this is not new. you had a generation of dancers in hip -hop and i go back to th '90s and you think about black women's bodies being exploited,
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and sold all day, every day. they were not able to walk away with more than $500 from the set. here you have kim kardashian's example. one could argue this is a brilliant american business story. and perhaps even feminist in that this woman has decided she owns her body, and she has agency. on the other hand, you consistently see this reckless -- i'm at a loss for words even when it comes to the assault on the black female body. this is about race. this is about the black woman's body. we're having the conversation without the black woman. this is the image she is now selling that we are essentially spending money for. >> right. so folks who don't know, it's sarah bartman, who was sort of put on display throughout yeerp. and those images were fully
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exploited. for me it's an interesting version of the gold digger narrative. she's often the wealthiest one in her partnership. not true in her marriage with kanye west. but how she may protect herself and her assets. and yet, they are often about the way in in which the male gaze looks back at her. i'm wondering when we see a woman made wealthy through this form, how that then tells a different story about marriage and connection partnership. >> well, i think probably kim kardashian getting into this marriage thinking kanye was and is more wealthy than she i, then the the tables may be turned in the future. they have a prenuptial agreement in which she would get more than kanye. we go into a marriage like the hamm divorce. there was no prenuptial agreement. she could have set how much she would have received in the the event of the divorce.
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so for me, i look at marriage as a business enterprise. i think most people don't look at it so. for me to kmecomment on kim kardashian, i think it's a teachable moment for women as role models. no matter what 25 million people following her, people are watching her every move. and you don't have to look like her to get ahead in the world and if you can use it. do it in a delicate way. on one hand, you have the paper mag cover. you have web traffic that is just enormous over whatever the previous web traffic was. it was like november 12th. 6.6 million page views and up to
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15.9. but she didn't break the internet. you compare the the kardashian image to the comment. and the comment beat kim kardashian. and part of what i wonder and it goes back to the idea of what is women's work worth? what we pay women who do domestic labor that seems like it's the work that wives and mothers do. is reich what preschooler teachers make compared to co kardashnt this particular moment. on one hand there's an idea of agency and exploitation. and where does kim kardashian fit into that? the reason she feels so comfortable exposing her body in this way is because we were all introduced to her under duress. she didn't expect that video of her and ray jay to be leaked. and they turned it into a profitable thing. her body was already exposed and
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consumed by millions around the world. now she's determining how we consumebody. >> do you think she knew about it? >> i promised i was going to explain this. that she was citing back that previous picture. speaking of which, another citational thing is a tweet that cited the paper mag cover. i'm going to get my comedian on on one of the funniest tweets in response this week. woman: everyone in the nicu -- all the nurses wanted to watch him when he was there 118 days. everything that you thought was important to you changes in light of having a child that needs you every moment.
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["mony mony" by billy idole she cokicks in on car stereo]y". ♪don't stop now come on mony♪ ♪come on yeah ♪i say yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪yeah ♪'cause you make me feel like a pony♪ ♪so good ♪like your pony ♪so good ♪ride the pony the sentra, with bose audio and nissanconnect technology. spread your joy. nissan. innovation that excites. [singing] ♪mony mony new york city's metropolitan museum of art is one of the largest museums in the world. it's home to the extraordinary washington crossing the delaware in 1851 and the intricate guilded bronze buddha. and the passionate cypress trees of the master van gogh, 1889. but this drew our attention to a
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piece that may have been overlooked before, but likely never will be again. it shows a fertility figure display with the text, here at the met we have artworks that could # #breaktheinternet too. i did sort of love that they were also -- they were being citational of her citation of the the feminist fertility -- the feminine fertility figure. >> first of all, it's about time we got to the white guy talking about this issue. >> yeah. >> what's going on? yeah, i love the idea of the met being like we have to get in on this. i have so much stuff to say. everything you said was really interesting. i want to say something about
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the eloquent thing. i feel like at this point everyone has a different definition. if that's what she considers eloquent, if that's what she wants to do with her body, that's fine. i would rather see her break the internet than some of these intellectual female politicians who support war crimes. you know what i mean? >> interesting. >> kind of, right? >> i don't know what her politics are, but we don't know if she's progressive? >> she identifies as a liberal republican. >> ew. all right. i take that back. i don't support it anymore. i've been watching guys react. and that's what i've been focused on, which taints anything beautiful about anything. i found it interesting that she will get shame for voluntarily, race issues aside, by doing something like this for the same guys stealing photos from jennifer lawrence. i they that was really shady. >> part of this has tooed, i think, with not only what this
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this figure represents and interestingly enough when they tell us this figure has been valued for a very long time. but aylissa milano responded by critiquing the ways in which there are criticisms of her breast feeding selfies. she's got breast feeding selfies. and she says, look, why am i getting crap for showing the side of my breast with my infant on it, where as there's such enthusiasm and excitement, particularly from men? i keep thinking, because it's how the body part is being used. for the experience of heterosexual men versus the feeding of a child. >> guys are probably like, ew, gross, a baby. but i think they're very different. i think they are very different things. i don't think either of them should have gotten criticized for doing this on their own. i'm glad aylissa milano doesn't sound like she's criticizing kim
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kardashian. that's a white lady thing to do. post pa picture of breast-feeding and compare the two. i don't know. guyses are creeps. so guys are going to gravitate towards the one more sexualized. >> but the problem with guys are creeps, right? whatever the empirical evidence is to support that, they're also -- right. they're also heavily engaged with the control of resources and wealth. the way men respond to women matters as economic and political social life. >> what i'm more shocked about is kanye was there at the shoot, apparently and endorsing it. >> all day. all day every day. i think he loves his wife and thinkses she's the most beautiful thing to walk the earth. we have a male saying i don't know if you liked it, didn't like it. i don't know you're married so
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you don't want to say that on air. a lot of men would say, i would never want my wife to do that. >> but the idea of allowing your wife to show her body. even though she has a child and a husband, it's still her body -- >> a husband or agency. but we can't forget that vogue just said this is the era of the booty. you ask why aylissa milano versus kim kardashian. the emphasis right now is on the the black girl's behind. but it's via jennifer lopez. >> forget about the bass and then discovering that song is -- right. so there's an angst about that. and so there's a feminist question about agency but also a question about race and capitalism and guys being creeps. thank you to you. also vicky ziegler and kiera. nerd land, don't go anywhere. still to come, fun with funny looking shapes.
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when the history books are written on the obama presidency, much will be made of this moment, march 23rd, 2010, president obama signed into law the affordable care act. much will be made of the political capital the president spent to pass implement and get people to buy into the law. one of the the more than 50 times house republicans tried to repeal and alter the law. in 2012 chief justice john roberts was the deciding vote on the supreme court to uphold the law. and how when the website first rolled out, the failure seemed the to put the entire log at risk. today is the first day of the new period of open enrollment. but it's not about the lines of code this time. it's not about the presidents campaigning or the republicans in the house. the next chapter sure to be written could all depend on this
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man. scalia, associate justice of the supreme court. he just might be the person who saves obamacare. because of what he calls the fundamental cannon of statutory consumption. sounds nerdy, right? join us next. we'll talk about it. i sure hope so. with healthcare costs, who knows. umm... everyone has retirement questions. so ameriprise created the exclusive confident retirement approach. now you and your ameripise advisor.... can get the real answers you need. start building your confident retirement today. hard it can be...how ...to breathe with copd? it can feel like this. copd includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema. spiriva is a once-daily inhaled... ...copd maintenance treatment...
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of them are eligible for some form of coverage under the new affordable care act programs. the congressional budget office projected 13 million people would be enrolled by 2015. but the department of health and human services downgraded those expectations on monday, releasing a report that said between 9 and 9.9 million would be enrolled before the end of next year. that may be if nine justices don't eliminate them in most states, thus making that insurance all but impossible to afford for millions of people. the challenge revolves around wording that declares subsidies be made available to help those enrolled in obamacare. quote, through an exchange established by the state. now the the claim that is being made in the lawsuit the supreme court is taking up is that the the words "by the state" signify
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a mandate na a state established a health care exchange, and that only people in states with their own exchanges are eligible for subsidie subsidies, while residents enrolled in the federal obamacare exchange are ineligible. whether that interpretation of the law, you essentially end subsidies going to more than 4 million people in the 37 states which didn't establish their own ex, and instead rely upon the the federal one. the states you see in orange on this map. nope, didn't see that map. but that's okay. in 2012 when the supreme court up held the sca, justice scalia seemed to fly in the face. the justices wrote, congress provided a backup scheme. the state declines to participate in the operation of an exchange, the federal government will step in and operate an exchange in that state. to boot, on the november 7th blog post from yal law professor
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abbi sp cites justice scalia's dedication to textualism. noting that textualists say it's to be sophisticated. the outcome of this obamacare challenge may come down to justice scalia, arguably the most conservative of the supreme course justices and whether he takes his own words literally. joining me now is jenea wilson for the the naacp legal defense and education fund. and from washington, amy howe. editor and reporter. amy, i want to start with you. what do you make of the fundament mal argument that scalia, if he's true to textualism as a theory, as opposed to opposition to the affordable care act, would have to side with the aca in this case? >> well, he certainly used those words. he also said elsewhere that when the language is clear courts
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shouldn't rewrite it. so i think really the challenge will be to convince justice scalia the language isn't clear so he then goes on and moves to look at the the rest of the statute. >> do you buy that? or is -- is the kind of ideological opinion of the justices more important than the legal reasoning they often offer? >> i think with cases involving the the interpretation of a statute, it's hard. you can also find some interpretation to support the position that you would be inclined to produce. one thing to look at is the decision to hear the case. i haven't heard anyone suggest that the supreme court, four justices need to vote. and i haven't heard anyone suggest that the court's four more liberal justices would have been those four votes. so then the the question is, did the votes come from the five
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more conservative justices? the answer is almost certainly. and they likely would have taken this case because they think that there's a plausible argument to be made to reverse the lower court decision, up holding this irs rule. >> it also feels to me, jenae that there's a fundament mal question that i think linked in part to the marriage equality question that the state decided. that's when people are already married, you can't take it away and had this been decided in the first ac decision, but now we're talking about millions of people who already have health care, and they have it provided through subsidies that come from the federal government because they live in states that didn't set up the exchanges. isn't there a justice question about taking away a subsidy currently provided? would the court see it that way? >> we home they would.
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there are 20 million people. to say they cannot support the federal exchanges would be a great harm to those 20 million and the 32 million that anticipate looking for health care and are without health care now. so we hope the justices will consider that in their sberp fact of the statute. and it's funny. we were all quite surprised when the health care act was upheld in a nonpolitical way. they we were moving above politics. i think this is going to be the real test. to see if they can turn which upside down. if he's really true, justice scalia and his more conservative comrades on the court, they should abide by the dissent they wrote initially up holding the act. >> so let me go to the the roberts' piece for a moment with you. because it also feels to me like, you know, we talk about second-term presidents wanting a
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legacy. but supreme court, particularly chief justices also want a lega legacy. and roberts threw in his hat with the aca. he undermined the portion around medicaid expansion, which has been devastating for many communities, but doesn't roberts basically have now his legacy tied up with aca going forward? >> that's right. and the worrisome part, as you pointed out, is initial opinion upholding the individual mandate did not up hold the portion of the act that forced states or encouraged, incentivized states with the threat of having their medicaid moneys reduced. so there is that opening, right? that perhaps states may not get the same protection they ought to. but any understanding of the
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original intent behind the law would lead anyone to believe that clearly these should apply to the federal exchanges as well. >> when we said the word "the state", it means the government. it doesn't mean the the state's littlest when we say, you know given by the state. we mean by the government. >> yes, and i think certainly the obama administration will make that clear. and they'll point to the other provisions of the statute. this goes back to how do you interpret the statute? you point to the the other provisions. obviously congress set up this backup scheme and you have to look at the whole statute, not just one word in the provision that the the challenges are relying on. >> because the supreme court is just too interesting for us to quit, because it is simply too legit, we are going to continue to talk about the supreme court when we come back. this time about the part that
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the supreme court is considering another high-profile case right now, and to get into our discussion about it, let us have a little bit of fun with shapes. now, these are the shapes that we all hopefully recognize. square, circle, triangle. these are as fundamental as you can get. now we've got those. but let's see if you can come up with words for these. there's this odd thing that sort of looks like, maybe an abstract dog or something drawn with the edges o f a ruler. and then there's this. it's something that maybe looks a little bit like juice spilled on your table that then dribbled off the edge. and this. well, i don't know what that is. but it turns out there is a name for the shapes. it's called gerrymandering. all of those were congressional districts, redistricted by their respective state houses. ohio, texas, and north carolina.
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the word gerrymander comes from a boston newspaper that published this image in 1812, alleging a new voting district in governor resembled a salamander. hence, you see a gerrymander. salamander, hence, gerrymander. after the 2014 elections, one of the aspects of the republican red wave is its success in state legislatures. part of what happens when the state legislatures are won is gerrymandering, the capacity to twist and turn districts as they see fit. so you see a lot of red. democrats control outright only 50. republicans have total control in 24 states. one of those gop states, alabama. the focus of a lawsuit in which a supreme court justices will decide whether a 2012 redistricting plans violates the rights of african-american voters. two big questions, the first,
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why does gerrymandering matter when most of what we're looking at, at least in the most recent election, was statewide contests for the senate, for the gubernatorial office, those aren't gerrymandering, those a states. >> it matters a great deal. the idea of just what you said. when the legislature changes power, changes control, you recognize there's a great amount of consequence when this redistricting occurs. redistricting happens every ten years, following the census. and it involves moving people from district to district, changing district lines and how that is done is enormously consequential not only in terms of state elections but even in local elections that are within that state. it's really about the balance of power. it's no surprise that this latest case has come from the state of alabama and alabama is no stranger to the supreme court. there was just a significant case last year involving the voting rights act. this in many ways is the next
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phase of looking at what remains to protect particularly african-american voters in the state of alabama and in parts of the south and countrywide. >> but it is legal to gerrymander based on partisanship. it's kind of a presumption, if your party win, to the victor goes the spoils. but can you, particularly in the u.s. south but maybe across the country, can you separate partisan and racial gerrymandering or in a place where the democrats are blacks and the blacks are democrats, is it always the same thing? >> it's interesting. partisan gerrymandering is lawful to a point. the supreme court has said there can be a limit to how much we place an emphasis on partis partisanship. there comes a point where the partisan overlay is just to strong. this case is about race. this case is where the republican-led legislature basically rubber-stamped the
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statement plan that was in existence following the 2000 election and put that same -- the same black population percentages into the plan for this 2012 plan. the problem with that is that political conditions have changed. black people did not need to be forced into 65% or 76% black districts in order to elect their candidates of choice. in fact, by doing so, you're minimizing their ability to elect candidates of choice. >> i want to come to you, amy, to help our viewers understand this a little bit. we are familiar with the language of majority minority districts, some of which have the odd shapes in part because there was an effort post-1965 voting rights act to allow african-americans living in districts where they might be 35% or 45% but simply couldn't get african-americans elected to the u.s. house of
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representatives, most importantly, an opportunity to elect those members. but then if it becomes 65% or 70%, does it take away black power? how do we figure out thousand to maximize black political influence in the capacity to elect candidates of choice? >> this really is -- this case before the supreme court is a twist because the original racial gerrymandering cases were challenges to, for example, the north carolina 12th district. and republicans were challenging the democrats' redistricting plan. the democrats' effort to create majority minority districts. and since republicans have decided that turnabout is fair play, their argument is, we were just trying to comply with the voting rights act. we had to keep the same percentage of african-americans in these districts. certainly wasn't that race was a factor. we were just trying to comply with the voting rights act and comply with the principle of one person, one vote.
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but the net effect of that is that african-americans have been concentrated in these districts, in essence, the white districts have become whiter, the african-americans are concentrated in these districts when they could have perhaps been spread out a little bit more and had political influence elsewhere. >> i guess part of what i wonder is whether or not the solution is a legal one or whether it's a political one, in other words, to say, what we need is for the democratic party in the south to be actively challenging for white voters and we need the republicans party to be actively challenging for african-american voters. >> it's become tougher since the supreme court's 2013 decision in another case out of alabama because now alabama when it redistricts -- even if the supreme court were to say that this redistricting plan violates the constitution, it would go back to the same republican-controlled legislature. this time, they would not have to go to the federal government
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first to get preclearance for the plan. the other thing to keep in mind is that this is not happening in a vacuum. the supreme court has another redistricting case before it out of arizona. arizona voters decided to take the legislature out of the redistricting process, in effect. handed it over to an independent commission and now the arizona legislature is challenging that as a violation of the constitution. >> and it all comes back to preclearance. thank you both. that's our show for today. thanks to you at home for watching. i'll see you tomorrow morning, 10:00 a.m. eastern. we'll look ahead to the president's anticipated executive action on immigration reform and zero in on the city that has all eyes upon it, ferguson, missouri. but right now, time for a preview of "weekends with alex witt." >> thanks so much, melissa. it rocked a small massachusetts town, a public meeting that officials halted because the crowd had gotten too raucous. what they were complaining about
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might surprise you. what's the real impact of the climate change deal with china. why doesn't any of it go into effect now in china? the u.s. troop drawdown in afghanistan is almost ending. why is there talk of a deal between the government there and the taliban government the u.s. fought to overthrow? all that and jon stewart is next. all around the world the dedicated people of united airlines ♪ are there to support you. ♪ that's got your back friendly. ♪ i wish... please, please, please, please, please. [ male announcer ] the wish we wish above all...is health.
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