i pass on these points to my employees to go on trips with their families. when my employees are happy, my customers are happy. vo: earn points for the things you're already buying. call 1-800-now-open to find out how the gold card can serve your business. hello from new york. i am chris hayes. this is the sunday edition of "up," and if you missed us yesterday, it's time to find a friend that has a dvr. and there were arrests in occupy protest last night, and protesters are expected to rally against the construction of the pipeline that would bring oil from canada to texas. some are hoping to persuade

obama that that's not worth the benefits. we have our panel here. author, michelle goldberg, writer to "newsweek" and "the daily beast." i will put in a plug for business.com, you are doing fantastic work. good news or slightly less bad news for the jobs report, the economy added 80,000 jobs in october, and the private sector added jobs. the official unemployment rate dropped from 9.1% only down to 9.0%, which means the job crisis continues.

and republicans blocked a bill to create infrastructure to create jobs. congressmen almost always jump at the chance to bring jobs, but not any more. they blocked an up or down vote on the $60 billion infrastructure bill. it's part of the broader stop hitting yourself strategy. ben bernanke, a republican and george bush appointee is becoming frustrated. we charted the growth of the chairman's irritation. his comments about congress were carefully couched. he said excessive cuts would be damaging, and by october he was more pointed, and he said fossering job creation is a

shared responsibility, and this week he offered his most explicit comment yet. by next spring, the comment will be something like get off your butts and do something for all that is holy. now, do you see any way out of the bind that we seem to be trapped in? >> well, i can take that answer in two ways. politically, i don't see it. i think as you are hinting at, i think the republicans are invested in blocking anything and doing it for political reasons because they are running on a platform for having obama making the economy worse, and they want to make that true. and there are a few things that could be done, and obama should make every effort to do that.

the biggest problem with the economy is lack of demand, and -- >> what does that mean? economists say lack of demand and it's a basic concept, but what does lack of demand mean? >> it means people are saving their money and not spending, and they are staying at home and not going out for dinner, and they are not going out for movies, and they are only buying what they absolutely have to. and they are making due and not able to buy new homes or furnish the homes, and that lack of demands feeds into the economy so businesses don't see the consumer come and buying goods, and business cut back on workers and investing and it becomes a vicious cycle. >> you said lack of demand, people are not buying cars or houses, and some say i thought the whole reason we're in the mess is we had the over

consumption, people were taking out all the credit and the savings rate was negative for long time and it's positive for the frs time in a while. isn't this good? shouldn't we be saving? >> well, let me answer that. >> please do. >> it's true that people were over consuming, and consuming with assets that were not really real. their house values were higher than they should have been, or were fundamentally correct, so they were over consuming. now we have gone too far in the other direction, and people are saving because they have a debt, and principally mortgage that they'll never be able to pay, and it's like shackles around their arms, and we need to get back to a level which we have adequate savings but not too much savings. >> let's say we live in the world right now where congress will block the republican party -- i am pointing at michael as if he were mitch mcconnell, and let's live in the

world in which republicans are going to block all the stimulative measures that we think would help with job creation. okay, and let's just accept that. what can the president do and ben bernanke, what can they do if we take as a given congress will give us no help? >> i think what obama can do is go directly at the issue, which is the huge buildup of mortgage debt that can never be repaid, and he can do that principally through fannie mae and freddie mac, allowing people to do refis, and cutting down the principle that will never be repaid because the homes were never worth it to begin with. and bernanke is making -- >> he's at the end of his rope. >> he is making a commitment, and job owning the market, which

is good, and making a commitment to keep interest rates low for as long as he needs to to get the economy back to higher employment. obama needs to keep trying with the stimulus. of course it will probably not work, but he needs to keep trying. and another thing, too, i think he can go after china. that may not be a big thing, but it would help. >> i think we will see moving on the china thing. robin wells, and we're going to come back and talk more about jobs, and i will make michael doherty defend his allies of the blockage of the jobs bill after this break. [ female announcer ] among marie claire's top 25 beauty products

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like all the sunday shows,

we like to play this as we bump in. so robin just explaining the path of our economy. michael i want to turn to you as our token conservative, and one of our favorites, i will say. i think there is a case to be made and people make it, and robin said it, that the gop is committed to making the economy worse. it's an intentional strategy. it's a fundamental bad faith pursuit of a political objective at the expense of the economy. and mitch mcconnell said the number one priority was defeating obama and there was on poll out asking the majority voters, do you think republicans are intentionally tanking the economy, and they said yes. do you think they are deliberately tanking the economy? >> you said normally congressmen are just jumping at the chance

to vote for infrastructure projects in their districts, and this is what tea party is saying, you use federal dollars to be popular in your district and get re-elected, so at the same time they can refuse to do that. >> they are satisfying a base of voters -- this is what is so strange, they are satisfying a small base of voters, which the small base of voters, and they are worried about the people running the tea party at the expense of broadening the community. >> there is also other things going on, where there is a strain of conservative thought saying dollars spent here are unpreducktive, and they should

be spent in the private sphere, and there was an article about how the infrastructure is not as bad as has been widely rumored, and you can drive around the country and don't see bridges collapsing. >> can you drive across the country without seeing a bridge collapse? that's a low bar. >> it's like we're better than saddam. >> but he is not right wing ideologue or something like that. >> right. >> and that's a legitimate political debate. >> let me show a republican icon touting the benefits of infrastructu infrastructure, and this is ronald reagan, and here he is talking about infrastructure. >> america can't afford throwaway roads or disposable

transit systems. the bridges and highways we fail to repair today will have to be rebuilt tomorrow at many times the costs. we need to get on with the job of renovating highways, and it will stimulate 170,000 jobs, but in real worthwhile work in the hard hit construction industries and an another 150,000 jobs in related industries. >> that was reagan talking when unemployment was elevated. can you map that on to barack obama, right? that's precisely the place where -- michelle, i think you are inherent to the bad faith effort, i think. >> you hear about the gop job proposals, which is usually just gutting regulations, and this is the gop line that regulation is the problem with the economy

even though all the small polls of business owners show that's not what they cite as the main problem with the economy. does anybody believe that? it seems like such a transparent figure leaf for their unwillingness to do anything stimulative? >> well, small business owners, there are two different polls in the past two weeks, and one cited -- small business owners said in one poll it was one of their number one concerns, and the other one said it was number two. and there are regulations that do cost a lot of money. groupon, the fees to go public is over $5 million -- >> are you saying the main problem with the economy is right, or do you believe conservatives with the economy is excessive regulation? that's what they are claiming. >> that's the main problem that already aligned with their stated philosophy. >> is that a sweet spot of the

diagram, right. >> yeah, they are using this crisis as just another way of pushing their agenda. overwhelmingly we know the lack of demand is what is wrong. that's what businesses are saying, lack of demand is holding them back. >> it goes both ways. >> well, as you said before, there's a tremendous amount of household private debt, and when they get a tax cut, that goes to pay off more credit card debt, or when they get, you know, an extra bump in a raise, that will pay off more of the principle in the mortgage. and some of the programs have gone to pry and prop up the housing markets, and they have kept houses in which they cannot afford, and that's the chain around their neck. >> and the housing, one of the parts of the recovery act, an $8,000 tax credit was very popular, and it was a republican plan. it was basically propping up a housing market that i think

needs to shrink. we're going to talk about what is going on in mississippi when we come back from the break. a huge vote up on tuesday. when is a fetus a person? >> it's not a fetus. >> pre-fetal people after this. ♪ ♪ walk, little walk ♪ small talk, big thoughts ♪ gonna tell them all just what i want ♪ ♪ i said don't stop, don't stop ♪ ♪ don't stop talking to me [ male announcer ] the most headroom per dollar of any car in america. the all-new nissan versa sedan. from $10,990. innovation upsized. innovation for all. ♪ we don't want anything to slow us down so it's surprising that most women aren't getting enough calcium. with over 25 flavors, yoplait original gives you 50% of the daily value of calcium in every cup. yoplait original gives you ♪ ♪

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shoot term person be defined to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent there of. that's the actual text of the question asked by mississippi amendment 26, which comes up for vote on tuesday. it's a simple bit of text but raises questions. there are several stages in the process that could count, and the amendment would sweep birth control and stillbirth and atopic births into the legal

system. one wondered exactly what kind of enforcement regime it will require. in other words, if it passes on tuesday, as is expected, it's headed directly to the supreme court. can you bet if it's successful we will see it on the ballot on a number of other states, too. i wanted to talk to you, peter, because it's something you have written a lot about. let's go to the absolute sort of base -- get right to the nub of the issue, which is how do you understand personhood. the radical thing being proposed is that four cells constituted a person. do you think that's right? if not, what is your sort of counter proposal for what constitutes personhood.

>> it's not right. it's never the meaning of a person that it was biological a member of the living thesis. the term comes from a latin persona meaning a mask worn by actors in a play and it became a role, and it was used in the doctrine of the trinity, three persons in one. so god, the father, the whholy ghost and then jesus. you don't have to be a person to be in that sense. and so the ideal of being rational in some way comes into it. the best sense of a person is being with some awareness, some rational awareness of who they are existing beyond simply the physical oergnism. >> that seems to me, though,

right, to exclude a 4-month-old baby? >> well, possibly. >> which seems problematic. >> no, i don't think it's a problem that a 4-month-old baby is not a person, because that's true. you might say the law should say from birth on, everybody counts legally as if they were a person, they have the same rights or same moral status as a person. that's distinct from the question which beings are person. >> i don't think personhood adds anything to the question. i think this particular amendment i think is wrong-headed in one way, and i am anti-abortion myself in just about all cases. but i don't think it's a matter of -- we're talking about personhood and when do we give rights to a living human. >> right. >> i don't think -- i think

personhood muddies the water because we don't know, and this law, as you said, there's complications where suddenly a miscarriage becomes suspicious under the law, and i don't think that's any way to base the laws, and the normal thing is parents have duties to their children, and we enforce that in the law all the time with negligent laws, you know, and we make sure that parents are educating their children, and feeding them, and just parents should protect their children even inite row. >> i want to kind of c categorically say, there's no doubt a 4-month-old baby is a person that a newborn baby is a person. i understand what you are saying from a philosophical perspective, but from a legal and moral perspective, a baby is

a person. at the same time, i -- well, there's a couple different things here. on the one hand, this changes not just the definition of a person but the definition of a pregnancy. pregnancy is not when sperm meets eggs, it's when there's an implant in the woman'sitiou wom and so kind of under the definitions in this law, every woman's uterus is a kind of slaughterhouse. and the other thing i want to say, personhood muddies the water from a different perspective in that in a certain way, even if you could prove beyond a doubt that an embryo or fetus was a person, that still would not prove that it's a

person that has a right to live in my uterus. you are talking about the rights that parents owe their children, but parents are allowed to put their children up for adoption, and this is -- i have never understood why this isn't -- why this is always discussed in kinds of terms of privacy as opposed to discussed in tums of unreasonable search and seizure. this is kind of a government appropriation. >> let me jump in. you believe in sort of an unlimited right to abortion up to birth -- >> i don't. i think we all know intuitively there's a difference between a 1--week-old embryo, and an 8 and a half months fetus, and we know the staunchest catholics and evangelicals believe that way in their lives, and they don't have

a church funeral if they miscarry at two months. the ideal of a government forcing to give birth against their will, and forcing the medical danger on a person is so grave that we only could allow it in kind of the most -- i would say that, you know, an 8-month-old fetus -- there is enough of an interest, that is -- it has -- there's enough of a moral interest in -- that we allow the government to intrude on a person's ataun me. and forced pregnancies is a very, very grave thing that you can only kind of sanction in the most moral extreme circumstances. >> you talked about pregnancy and it's a great danger, and it's the same way the race is

still propgated. >> yeah, for now. >> if you retain your child, the state does expect you to feed, clothe, educate it, and they will punish you if you don't. >> that's not true. you can give your child up for adoption. >> yeah, but you can't do whatever you want if you intend to retain the child? >> right, sometimes. and the state monitors fathers and mothers until the child is 18. when we talk about birth, we are talking about a dramatic medical event, but, i mean, we already have this concept -- >> but we don't, for example, force a mother to give up a kidney for her child, and that would force a drastic medical intervention to save the life of another person. >> and i want to ask for a

second about where the movement is on all this to take a step out from the bedrock issue. there's a lot of controversy in the movement. the catholic bishops are against the personhood amendment, and the mainstays of the movement are against it, and it has been tried other places and viewed as extreme. what do you think it's about this moment that is producing the ground swell that sort of brings this forward? >> well, there's always been almost what you would call a radical part of the anti-abortion movement. and it says abortion is a grave injustice, and it has to be stopped now, and it's equivalent to other evils in our society, and you should applaud a john brown that goes to great links to end slavery, and we need to do something that sticks a heart into the supreme court's rowe v

wade ruling, and slowly they restrict access to abortion, and getting the culture used to restricted abortion, and attacking things in the culture and life and trying to spread awareness, and then also working on the jurisprudence. >> there's a single lone facility that provides it. >> can you well understand, if you put yourself in the position of the prolife movement as they call themselves, you can understand the frustration and having the decisions taken out of the democratic process and hand to a court which makes it impossible to change except by judicial appointments, and it's a corruption of the process of the judicial appointment in the supreme court. i think it should be a decision that is made democratly. >> i know that's your position,

but i don't understand it. your position on when life begins is rather more extreme than mine. >> well, that's a different question as to whether or not it should be taken out of the hands of the legislators. >> well, it's not. weather not -- again, i go back to the analogy of donating a kidney. whether or not a certain class of person should be forced to donate kidneys is not something we put up to a vote. we have bedrock rights that are not put up to a vote, and why would this be different. >> i think the court goes too far in trying to invent a right to privacy in the constitution that doesn't exist, and i think the example you gave could be put up to a popular vote. and in other countries, abortion is a matter of the legislature. it's a matter of the prime see of the democratic process to decide an issue. the court says we cannot say when life begins in roe versus

wade. >> well, let's imagine a world in which roe does not control, and this is passed on tuesday, and on wednesday when it becomes law, we now have an entirely new regime in which the fertilized egg is a person. >> in mississippi, only, right? >> yeah, and there's a lot of people in mississippi. and now there's an entire legal regimen that has to be created. that's what is so striking, if you take it one day after, sure, it's symbolic and everybody can rally behind this, because everybody knows it's going to be a challenge to the supreme court, but if you imagine the next day, if you imagine the next day, what does the legal regime look like that enforced the principle? >> well, there's nothing in terms of the next day. we all assume it's unconstitutional with regards to abortion, and lawyers i have talked to pointed out, there's no constitutional right to ibs.

so one of the things that this constitutional amendment would do is severely limit the in vitro fertilization. the woman will have drugs to stimulate her over res. if more than two or three eggs progresses, you only implant two or three, and you freeze the rest, because you don't want to endanger the woman or put in a kind of octomom situation, and that way if the cycle fails as they often do -- >> the point is there are some fertilized eggs that are not used. >> yeah, and the people have been clear about this, and you can only fertilize as many eggs you are willing to implant, so not only does it drastically

lower success rates but it increases the risk of multiples, because you would -- >> no, you don't have to. you can just implant one at a time. do you have a lower rate of success. >> but if you are only trying to implant -- if your success rates go down drastically if you are only fertilizing one egg. >> can you do it if you believe each embryo has to be respected like you and me, that's what you would do. >> we will talk about the campaign around it, which i think is a fascinating thing to look into. [ male announcer ] drinking a smoothie with no vegetable nutrition? ♪ [ gong ] strawberry banana! [ male announcer ] for a smoothie with real fruit plus veggie nutrition new v8 v-fusion smoothie. could've had a v8.

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children ♪ ♪ it's a life ♪ they are children ♪ so we fight for the rights of the children ♪ >> that's the hip-hop group, christ sen trick, and that's a video in support of the amendment, and we have been playing this because it's a remarkable cultural text in that it's extremely well produced and compelling and emotionally affective in one way, and it looks like a pregnant woman in her eighth month, which is the iconic image. >> yeah, and the iconically deceptive image. >> yeah, and there are racial politics of how it's being proposed in mississippi. it's a very high with a high

african-american population. and the other main spokes people for the yes on 26 movement in mississippi, is an obgyn talking about it. >> science confirms a person is a human being at the moment of fertilization. at that moment we are fully human and fully alive. it's a moral issue because it doesn't matter if you come from a family that is rich or poor, black or white, or even if your father was a rapist. >> this is -- dr. freda busch is a perfect spokesperson for this. >> this is a culmination on the movement to point abortion as black genocide. kind of using some of the

genuinely hideous things that margaret sanger said, and in a context that they were talking about, anti-birth control and using yao jennic arguments. she said things that were despicable, but understanding giving her era, but there's a long campaign of distortion that says some are targeting african-americans. you saw it with the debate over funding planned parenthood, one after another white congressmen stood up and talked with passion about african-americans babies, until gwen moore stood up and said i have had three of them. >> yeah, and i think what is interesting to me is in this case in mississippi, and this is

what i am trying to borough into, why sit working now? here is the statement of the democratic gubernatorial candidate. keep in mind, we're talking about something that will criminalize certain forms of birth control. this is extreme of a measure as ever. it has been up in colorado, defeated by 3 to 1 margins. and here is johnny dupery. he supports the personhood amendment, and he ultimate lisa ports the amendment because he believes life begins at conception. why is it working now? >> it's working now in mississippi. >> well, that's probably true. there is a confusion, right? i believe life begins at conception, i don't believe the

life that begins don't have the right to continue. some people are bringing out a lawsuit to seaworld, because of the way they are imprisoning whales. and the whales are alive -- it would make more sense than the embryo personhood amendment, really. >> the reason that prolifers have adopted the rhetoric of civil rights is because it's the only language available to them in america. you can't talk very successfully in american politics about responsibilities that we owe our children. we say children have rights, they have rights to their

parents' attention and a right to life, whereas philosophically, i don't believe in personhood the way that peter singer talks about, i just believe parents have a normal responsibility to their child and that includes when they are in the womb. this is the only available to them, so naturally they draw on previous struggles for human rights, and prolifers will say we're taking a class of persons because of their location or age, and we are saying they are nonpersons legally as other groups of people, slaves were considered nonpersons legally -- >> so you and i are agreeing that this is a fiction -- >> well, we agree -- on one philosophical point but we die verge where we walk from it. i don't see the movement to go

politically, and the law is about rights that we owe each other. naturally in real life families are about obligations and mutual affiliation and other things that proceeded the enlightenment notions of human rights. >> i think the appropriations of civil rights dialogue by this group, i would say it's a way of sanitizing, and i agree with michelle, what we have afterwards is a policed state where the doctors would be reporting and what would be going on in their own bodies. where are these people, if we want to talk about the civil rights of being in a safe community. this is increasing radicalization of the republican party, where we have seen ronald reagan, we saw it in terms of the clip about infrastructure, ronald reagan is a paragone of moderation. this is where the center is not holding with the republican party. >> i want to talk more about this after this break. the postal service is critical to our economy--

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talking about the vote on tuesday that will take place in mississippi and whether to amend mississippi constitution to define personhood to apply to any fertilized egg, and there's consequences that would fall from that. robin wells, you were talking about the fact that this would turn women's bodies into a crime scene. i want to ask, there's part of me sometimes that thinks, i don't really believe this, but i will say it. i consider the fact that the roe ruling takes it -- let's say we didn't have it, and it was passed in mississippi, then the grim reality of what it would be from taxing this amendment, everything from tax law -- think about all the things a person

does -- >> you would have people dying, because you would have botched abortions by people not qualified. >> if roe takes the spresher off, knowing that they can make the symbolic -- they can wave it without the reality of what it would mean. >> we are seeing around the edges, there has been a long campaign to instill the fetus with personhood and other reis that correct, for example, these fetal protection laws, laws saying if you assault a pregnant woman, you be charged with two crimes instead of one, and it's framed in the protection of the woman, and there have been cases around the country where women have been prosecuted and jailed for either attempting to procure an illegal abortion, one woman in utah -- not a woman but a girl in utah was prosecuted for

attempted manslaughter, she was so desperate, she paid for somebody to beat her up. it has not got to the point where it affects middle class women or women with a lot of media visibility. we have seen what the enforcement of this thing looks like around the world, and countries in latin america where you do have these laws, and you see miscarriages being investigated and you see women going to the hospital with pregnancies being treated -- >> well, i am against the attempt to make miscarriages suspicious. when we see there would be a police state to enforce this, and some others believe that how

can you investigate how i made my decision and how to hire somebody. aren't you going to ruin businesses this way? it has not played out that way, and it's not always -- >> you are deathly weaving back in into the civil rights claim. >> that's what this is built in as a model. we did not get a police state for another proquality movement for blacks. >> the standard was high to actually prove discrimination, whereas this is very specific. >> we don't have specific enforcement measures. >> sorry to go to break. we will come back and button this up after that.

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some of the big names on today's talk shows include ron paul and john huntsman, and house speaker john boehner, and

former secretary of state, condoleezza rice, and then we have you guys a list of all the other people on sunday shows. peter, what would you ask and of whom would you ask today. >> john huntsman, he seems to be clear that human beings are causing climate change, and this is the challenge of the 21st century that is being ignored by the republican side certainly. how can you stop yourself from standing up and shaking these people saying don't you realize that we are going to cause hundreds of millions of people to become climate refugees and destroy the planet for thousands of years to come, and as a conservative, as a conservative, don't you want to keep the good things there? >> that's a great question. >> i would ask john boehner how he can in good faith advocate

further prau stair tea measures, when the economy is in a downturn, further austerity makes it go down further. >> romney when he was running against ted kennedy talked about the botched abortion in 1963, and why that solidified his convictions. why doesn't anybody ask him what he thinks about her death now? >> that's a great question. >> if i were on "meet the press" today, i would ask a couple questions like why are you so awesome? >> we will go live to the ohio and the front lines of the battle reunion rights, and erin

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snichltd good morning, from new york. i am chris hayes. we have a former princeton professor, robin wells, and coauthor of the best-selling book, and michelle goldburg, a writer to "newsweek" and the "daily beast," and now the politics eder for business insider.com. on tuesday we were talking about the big referendum vote in mississippi, and there's another big vote in ohio where they will vote on whether to strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights. it's senate bill 5 signed by republican governor back in the

spring. in addition to taking away collective bargaining rights, it requires firefighters, police and teachers to pay 15% of the health insurance premiums and strips them of rights over some issues. people will be voting on a referendum, and all week we have been trying to ground into their head what the yes and no vote is. if you vote yes, you are endorsing the bill, and if you vote no, a no vote means you want to see it overturned, and a yes vote means you want to see it kept. it made it to the ballot. and more than 1 million signatures were gathered, and 60% of folks in ohio are against the law, while only 30% support it. what do those numbers translate? we will hear on tuesday. i have heard some folks are very

nervous that the polling is actually inflated, that it doesn't reflect and that it's going to be a far, far closer vote on tuesday than people realize now. i have been hearing that from folks in ohio. >> one campaigning against the law is joining us. >> good to be with you, chris. thanks. >> senator, what is your sense in talking to constituents and taking the temperature of voters in ohio and talking about where they are on the vote on tuesday? >> the passion is on our side. this fight did not need to happen. john casic won last year talking about lost jobs, understandably. the voters are upset about what is happening. they voted for change. he spent most of his first year as have republicans in the house and senate in columbus going after collective bargaining rights and voting rights and

women's rights and dividing the staten necessarily. and in many ways, that's why the polling shows that this is likely going to go down. i am not convinced yet. as i said, the passion is on our side to repeal the vote to no, but the kind of money that the karl rove machine natalie and the kind of organization that the republican governor is using -- i don't know if he is using state resources, but the private resources of the republican party and the special interest money makes it a real race. i am very concerned between now and tuesday. >> one of the interesting differences between the similar bill passed in wisconsin, obviously that provoked backlash as well, and it was a bill that was smartly exempting police and firefighters from the law, whereas in ohio they are included, and from the report i read and the people i talked to in ohio about the bill, it seems

the symbolic of the police and firefighters are playing a big part of the bill? >> i think that one of the most important functions, if not the most important function of the government is public safety, and the governor attacked public safety, and he attacked police and fire, and first responders, and he attacked teachers and libraria librarians, and state workers. and somebody pointed out, this may be the first time in american history where the issue of collective bargaining rights will be on the ballot for voters to decide. anybody that is at all fair-minded understands the reason we have a middle class in the country a. big part of the reason underscoring is that workers is been able to organize a collective bargaining if so chosen, and that's why it made

us the richest country in the world. >> conservatives, when they articulate their argument against collective bargaining on benefits and workforce rules for public employees, they make the argument public employees are not like private employees in some crucial ways. i want to play sound from toe la -- ohio, where there is a firefighters struck. >> firemen join police, bar ginlg collectors and other city employees in a two-day strike which left toledo unprotected. residents were rescued by supervisory personnel. >> i want you to respond to that. it seems to briefly sort of play devil's advocate on behalf of the conservative argument, the public employees and safety employees are a different

employee than private employees, and maybe the same rules should not apply to them. >> i think that clip shows exactly how that was a precollective bargaining clip, and that passed in 1983 in ohio. that's the whole story, you don't see cops calling in with blue flu now, and you don't see the kind of labor strike that you saw before, because workers have an ability to sit down at the table with employers, and not with management, the cities or the counties or the state, the school boards, and not just to discuss wages, but as a teacher told me, in suburban columbus, when i sit at the table, we are bargaining for a slower class size on behalf of the students. mike tailor of the fop said we also bargain for bulletproof vests, and safety vests, and they are bargaining for something more than wages and benefits, and that's what the

governor seems to forget in what the far right in their national agenda to push the ajen tau aag that's what makes it important for ohio, but makes it important natalie on thiona nationally. >> we're back after this. . two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. north america actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. a large part of that is oil sands. this resource has the ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. at our kearl project in canada, we'll be able to produce these oil sands with the same emissions as many other oils and that's a huge breakthrough. that's good for our country's energy security and our economy. [ sighs ] can't wait 'til morning. wait, it's morning in china...

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we have got ohio senator, sherry brown on satellite here. he is in the state that will hold a referendum vote that would severely limit, if not get rid of collective bargaining for public employees in the state. >> senator, you mentioned the

role that unions have played in establishing the middle class in the united states, and the middle class is under attack in a way now because we have never been at a time when top 1% or 5% have held so much of the nation's wealth and have been gaining the whole time during the last decades while a majority of americans have not seen their income rise. do you see this as part of the movement to reinforce the privilege of those right at the top, and is that why you think there is so much resistance in ohio, the people are starting to realize that there are forces trying to polarize society in that way? >> yeah, peter, i don't see any question that there is some relation between the occupy wall street and what is happening in ohio. we had 17,000 volunteers circulate -- or 17,000 volunteers in the campaign. the number of signatures, as chris pointed out earlier, over 1 million signatures were

gathered and we only needed 250,000 signatures back in spring, and when the boxes were brought in full of the petitions, they had to call the engineer and see if the floor could handle the boxes full of the petitions signed, and that's a true story. the class warfare has been the elite and privileges and wall street committing class warfare aimed at the middle class. and this bargaining rights is part of that, as is the push by the republicans still for more tax cuts for the rich. the resistance to any kind of tax increase on the wealthy, and it's -- the voters -- the public has had it on this. it's clear the public recognizes that exactly what you said, that basically the last ten years,

90% of the public has not had a raise, and any raise they get goes into health insurance and the top 1% has seen their incomes double and triple. what is fair about that, when people are working just as hard or harder than ever before? >> i would like to follow-up on that. i agree that there has been a long-term agenda of the republican party to diminish collective bargaining, and that has helped to drive the increase in income in ae inquality that we have. and do you think that people in ohio are seeing this issue and beyond it, or are they taking it forward into the election of 2012? >> i think a defeat, a rollback repeal, and if we win on tuesday, i think we will, but it's harder and closer because of the money and the last-minute

sort of huh stair yikz, if you will. people see the very partisan legislature going after, as i said, going after collective bargaining rights and voter rights, and laws that republicans wrote with some democratic input ten years ago, and going after women's rights in washington, and pel grants, and that's what is troubling. i think the income inequality is also a result of tax policy, and trade policy, and globalization. we passed this year a bill that i introduce in china trade to push the chinese back on manipulating currency. it was clear, overwhelming support from the public. the public just wants a fair shake. they are working hard and playing by the rules, as the

clich'e goes. and they are not getting it from large corporations or globalization or from their government. >> you are up for re-election in 2012. i wonder how you explain to constituents who feel frustrated with the elevated unemployment, particularly in a state like ohio, which has had lots of manufacturing, and industrialization, and how do you explain to them the fact that congress seems unable to do anything to help them, to pass jobs, in terms of the sort of way the filibuster has been institutionalized, and is it hard to communicate to people exactly why things are not getting done, or do they blame everybody equally? >> well, i think in some sense they blame everybody equally. what the president has done in the last two or three weeks,

instet of the move to the middle, that's not really where everybody is. where everybody is they want a government is that on their side. that's why i pushed that china trade bill, that currency bill. that's why i opposed the trade agreements like the trade agreement with korea, and clearly the trade policy is not working, and we have the response of the elite in washington, unfortunately some members of my party with the republicans, say let's do more of it. it's showing to the voters, whose side are you on? are you willing to take on corporations that outsource jobs and then do something that companies -- i don't believe in history really have done, shut down manufacturing and move it to china, and then sell the products back to the country. people see that as a betrayal of the middle class and of our

national interests. voters want somebody on our side that will fight them. >> michael doherty here from business insider. >> yeah, you are right there's an ideology difference between democrats and republicans, but it only has become live as tax revenues crashed in the last few years, and only politically possible for republicans to get it on the agenda. a lot of the public benefits packages and pensions were based on a model of increasing revenues and growth from the '90s and the early part of the decade continuing on forever. it seemed like it was inevitable if growth leveled off or there was a crash that you would have middle class voters looking at public servants as, you know, competitors for the tax dollar. how do you get out of this without trying to generate an economic growth and not just a few extra taxes on a small percentage of the population?

>> well, you do that through the bargaining table, which is exactly what has happened. public workers and unions understand budgets and they see what has happened in their local fire department or their local county children service agency or whenever they're collective bargaining, and they know that those budget issues are real. you have seen in community after community, i can give along list of public employee unions that have done major concessions in order to get, because they want as many of their firefighters and librarians and public workers working, so they have done the kinds of good citizenship, and economic reality that they have needed to do, by saying, yes, we will do this and get back to the table. what the governor in ohio did and legislature did was use that as an excuse, use budget issues as an excuse to take away

rights. that's what is so sad about this. we should be focusing together, republicans and democrats, and state and local and federal government on how to create jobs, and instead they injected this divisiveness that didn't need to be there by going after women's rights and voter rights and all of those things that should not be on the table. we ought to be focussing on job growth. in fact, the issues that you mentioned would be less acute if we could grow ourselves in part out of this mess. >> senator, democrat from ohio, thank you so much for coming on the program. hope we can you have back. >> we'll do it again. thanks. eric brock avic joins us in the studio after this. oh, oh. oooh! will love ever come my way? oh my! ♪ i believe in miracles [ male announcer ] swiffer attracts dirt. swiffer sweeper's new, thicker cloths get deep into ridges

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erin brockovich, the second most famous organizer in the country, with no formal legal education she successfully

fought for a settlement against a gas company for leaking toxics into the water in california. she continues to fight against malfee yans, and if you are thinking to yourself, haven't i heard the name, erin brockovich before? yes, you have. it was from a hit movie. i am curious what the experience is of having your name become so massive in having a movie named after it and jewulia roberts playing the role, and people recognize you and is it a bewillering that experience? >> it's a double-edged sword, because not everybody embraces

it. it's a gamut of things, so i never know what to expect. >> it's a change level of fame in which your name is probably more famous than your -- your name is the thing they can hold on to. >> yes, they know the name but don't know who i am visually. it's the strangest thing. sometimes i will be in the grocery store line, and they will ingist there is no erin brockovi brockovich, and therefore i am not her. >> it's a fictional character. >> true. very train things happen often. >> so you are still doing, aside from the writing you are doing, you are still doing work and traveling a lot -- >> absolutely. that's my main job. >> what would you describe your job as? what do you do when you travel around the country? >> i would see myself as a consumer advocate that is really out fighting for and looking for, you know, where we are having public health issues, and

public wealth, you know, as being jeopardized, and health and wealth is being jeopardized. i get tens of thousands of e-mails every month. >> sounds daunting. >> it is. i have been plotting because so many people have been coming to me in and around contaminated zones where there is excess disease and illness, and there's a map that i plotted has sites reporting to me what appears to them 12 kids on one block with cancer, or different types of diseases in the community. it has become so alarming i have been in discussion with google on how we can create a peoples' reporting industry and begin to plot these sites and locations. if we don't look at it, we will never find a solution to what some of our problems are. >> is part of the issue that people don't know -- it's possible that, you know, they

are diagnosed with cancer or they have some illness, and they have no means of knowing if that's also true of people gee graphically colocated with them. >> yeah, i have more things happening now because of all of the social network explosions that we are going through, and facebook, because people are being stitched back together through facebook. i have had more groups come to me, who from either high school knew each other, or college knew each other, but they have all left and gone on and had babies, and travelled internationally, and moved, but they found each other on facebook, and what they found with similarities, they have cancer, and then they come to me and we are able to take that group and place them back to a location and possibly look at was there a source or a reason why all of them have the disease. it's been fascinating to watch what facebook and those social networks have done. >> i was reading about some of the work that you were proposing

on google, and it called to mind the issue of vaccines and autism, where people felt like they saw a causal relationship, and there was early science that said there seemed to be, and that has been detracted, and do you worry about producing a kind of similar situation of unsubstantiated fear about causation where it may turn out there is a bunch of people that have cancer for no discernible reason. >> yeah, that's a good point. sometimes that could be true. it's not designed to create a fear. but here is the other side of the issue. often times we might not know if there really is an association with something or a cluster if we can't idea and know all the people that have it. so what is happening with the map is we're able to start

referencing this information, and possibly giving it to whoever it needs to go to, so we can look at all the numbers. you will never have the true science if you don't have the numbers. more often than not, cdc is a perfect example, an outbreak of a situation, people don't automatically know to contact the agencies to report the problem. this is what i am seeing happening out there. they are scrambling around not knowing where to report it to. and they think erin brockovich can help me, and they report it to me. >> that's fascinating. >> i saw a movie once and i think i should e-mail that woman. >> yeah, that would be my alias, julia roberts. >> yeah, i wonder if she gets hundreds of e-mails reporting clusters. >> i don't know. well, that's the point here. if we don't look to what the people are saying to us, what is happening to them, and in some way be able to report it

effectively, then we're never going to know. if nobody ever knows, then we will never find a solution. when i look at the map, it tells me there is something going on out there that we need to at least look at. >> and there are sites all over the country, and what is remarkable, just how many toxic sites there are around the country. michelle and i work in brooklyn, and there's a canal which i walk over every day, and there are super fun sites and toxic sites all over the place that people don't recognize. i want to talk about the politics after this break. lap! [ male announcer ] your favorite foods fighting you? fight back fast with tums. calcium rich tums goes to work in seconds. nothing works faster. ♪ tum tum tum tum tums

nothing works faster. ♪ ♪ ♪ when your chain of supply ♪ goes from here to shanghai, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ chips from here, boards from there ♪ ♪ track it all through the air, that's logistics. ♪ ♪ clearing customs like that ♪ hurry up no time flat that's logistics. ♪ ♪ all new technology ups brings to me, ♪ ♪ that's logistics. ♪ all president obama has to offer is more debt and more killing regulations. >> job-recrating principles of cutting taxes are far better than principles of big

government. >> they can reverse a job-killing regulation, but only if he knows he has gotten dozens of others in the pipeline behind it. >> here is the big kicker. businesses today pay 1.8 trillion in job-killing regulations. >> i bet you did not know regulations is from job-killing regulation, which the republicans use. when you hear the rhetoric about the perils and evils of regulation, what is your reaction to it? >> there's a couple reactions i have. i am not in communities, and this is what i have been doing for 21 years, and i am the foot soldier with everybody else on the toxic sites, and it's complicated. regulation shows up but then goes away. their hands seem to be tied. not everything is getting done. more often than not i am seeing things not getting done.

i had a conversation with one of my co-workers the other day, and more regulation is not going to be necessarily the answer. when we can't even comply with what is on the books. so by pushing more regulations, i think in some ways is causing more problems. >> but this is also part of the problem with austerity politics, in that they starve the system and make the system ineffective, and then use it as an argument as to why systemic answers are not possible. you are arguing saying regulations are not the problem, but the enforcement is the problem, so is what we need is a beefed up epa? >> you need some regulation, and i am not proposing taking it all off the tanl, but if it begins to be too much, we are not even dealing with the issue on the table. as a layperson out there in the community with people hearing what is going on with them, you

know, there is an be a stins -- >> what do we need? >> what i am seeing, there needs to be some transparency, and this is my opinion in dealing with the communities, there has to be transparency between a community and company. there does. and that's not going on. because people -- >> in terms of what that are the chemicals being used and what is being put in the ground and the health -- i want to make sure we're concrete about what is happening here. we are talking about companies that for whatever reason are emitting things into the ground or air. >> yeah, and the companies have to coexist together in the same place, and the communities will tell me, i don't want the company to go away because i need a job, and this is how i

take care of my children and get health insurance, but i don't want you to poisen me at the same time. and this will turn into another litigation and the cleanup doesn't get done and people are still being harmed, and -- >> but absent regulations or litigation, what other way is there to enforce transparency? companies will not do it as of the goodness of their hearts? >> litigation is used as a tool to get them to do the right thing. you have to have some regulations otherwise they continue to do the things that harm the public. and we need to sometimes create an advisory board with the community, and that community picks one or two leaders as spokes people to sit at a table with something from the company so they can hear what the community wants and the company that can explain to the

community what it is they can offer. >> and it seems like there's an issue of a timeline accountability, in the famous case that, you know -- >> in the film? ? >> yeah. >> what was the movie called again, in the film "erin brockovich," that is still unfolding, right, the settlement? >> yes. >> and what is interesting, the timeline of dealing with the issues is so alarming. i was reading about the canal because i live near it, and they are protecting -- it's -- my kid will inbound college by the time it's cleaned up. what is the status of the original pg & e settlement that you were part of? is that still being worked out? is the chemical still being removed from the ground water? >> yes. and we're back out in hinkly again, and the plume has shifted

its direction, and now we have more homes and people affected. just in a real quick nutshell. i look at this all the time and i look at a company like pg & e, that paid $335 million on the second case, and they will have a third one coming up. and here is the thing, had they just in the first place dealt with the community, said there was a poison -- which the community would have understood and appreciated that there was respect on their end. this litigation would have never happened. we would have a better environment out there. we would have healthier people, and a company that could have saved half a billion dollars. somewhere we're not doing business the right way. >> and this is a point that a writer i like makes, and we see

the movement of government into the litigation, because we do not have a very strong enforcement regime an effective regulatory edfest constructed. and that's an efficient way of -- >> well, it takes years to get through the court system. >> erin brockovich, a pleasure to have you at the table. come back next time you are in new york. >> thank you for having me. what you should know in the week coming up is next. 's elect. i don't think so. it's got a gas tank right here. electric tank, right over here. an electric tank? really, stu? is that what you pour the electricity in? it's actually both, guys. i can plug in and go 35 miles gas free, or i can fill up and go a whole lot farther. is that my burger? oh. i just got bun. i didn't even bite any burger.

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ñço?gçwoñ be ready for your next dental check-up. what are these guys doing? [ horn honks ] could you please not honk while this guy's telling me about his chevy volt? is that that new... is that the electric car? yeah. but it takes gas too. ask him how much he spends on gas. how much does he spend on gas? how much do you spend on gas? how much do i spend on gas? if i charge regularly, i fill up like once a month. he only has to fill up about once a month. [ woman ] wow. that's amazing. because we are committed to getting it right on "up," and we do corrections. last week during the discussion on voting rights, one of the guests mentioned that a nra national associations card is an acceptable card for voting in

texas but a student id is not. but that's is not right. you cannot use an nra card for voting, but licenses to carry concealed handguns are an acceptable i dichlt to vote and student ids are not. if you catch an error in the show, please tweet us. right now it's time for a preview of "weekends with alex witt." >> a new book from clinton with indirect advise for obama about jump-starting the economy and those times of things. and a new article examines the mood of america and we will look at how you might be feeling this morning. and a earthquake in oklahoma of all places. we will explain that, and chris

we will be rocking and rolling this morning. what you should know as you watch the news unfold this week. in the last month alone, 650,000 people joined credit unions. and even though the official move your money date has passed there's no reason you can't join a credit union when you feel moved. the way we measure poverty is about to change. the census will unveil new poverty assessments. the good news is that the increase in poverty during the recession is not as quite as dramatic as has been reported thanks to government social safety net policies, and the earned income tax credit which were counted by the old measure. even with the resized numbers, tens of millions of the people in this country are living in poverty, and it doesn't have to be that way. polling still has one herman

cain atop of the gop field. you should know if the great right wing noise machines that evolution and global warming are fictions, then convincing them that cain is a liberal media conspiracy should be a piece of cake. the people of iceland seized control of their own wake in the financial crisis. they have told creditors at the are going to have to wait to be paid back. illinois congressman, joe walsh, who is can'tly being sued by his ex-wife for allegedly unpaid child support received an award for unwavering support of the family. you should know that sometimes the right is more concerned with the capital family in the abstract than actual families.

the next time you fly in or out of d.c.'s national reagan airport, you will be grated with the soviet-style statue. you should know surrounding the statue will be plaques bearing the names of those who died of aids before he gave his first speech, and you should know that i made that up but wish i didn't. my guest are going to come back and tell us what they think we should know this week right after this. [ groans ] [ marge ] psst.

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our guests are back to tell us what they think you should know this week. what this week -- >> what's hot in ethics this week? >> obviously, the mississippi -- has made that a hot topic. i mean, there's a lot of issue still around that don't get talked about. i mentioned climate change and the question i wanted to ask jon huntsman. i think that's a moral issue. foreign aid is another thing. when people are talking about budget cuts, they team so imagine that foreign aid is a large proportion of the budget. it's 1% and if you do cut it, people are concerned about life if you do cut it. you are consigning more babies to die because without providing basic healthcare, unicef says

7.6 million children under five die every year from avoidable poverty-related causes. our foreign aid is not as effective as it could be. but it's helping to reduce that effort. that's a big moral issue. >> they should think about the fact that it's fascinating to watch republicans demagog against foreign aid and say their support of israel is invaluable. of course, israel is the biggest recipient of that 1%. >> robin wells, what should people know as we head into the week? >> i'd like to quickly try and dispel information about increasing taxes. the republicans have tried to paint obama as the big increase our taxes and how this will destroy the economy. the fact is that among advanced nations, we are greatly undertaxed. of course, you dooent want to put taxes on working people, middle class people struggling right now. there's no reason were why we can't raise taxes on people making more than a million dollars.

you' the lion's share has gone to the upper 1% and more so the .01%. people in the lower income ranges, particularly working people and poor people, have actually seen their incomes decline the past few years. that's the first time this has happened since the great depression. vast income equality. >> we need to institute a transactions tax on financial transactio transactions. >> it's an issue with -- >> a tiny tax. but on billions of dollars. will have no effect on financial transactions because it's too small for the agents to see. but it can raise vast amounts of money. more money than taxing millionaires. >> it would have the benefit of taxing an activity which can be harmful. algorithm mick trading, thousands of trades per second. it will make that more costly.

if you're buying and holing, it's essentially negligent legible. >> it's the robin hood tax. it could be used to -- a part could be used to help global equality. >> michelle goldberg of the daily beast and newsweek. what should folks nou know this week? >> what people should know when they're watching the elections unfold on tuesday, although mississippi, it might be easy to be cavalier about it because it's going to be held unconstitutional as it pertains to abortion most likely, it's coming to a lot more states in 2012. likely in ohio, montana, in florida. this is not just kind of a challenge to the existing law on apportion, but it's going to have a big effect on the 2012 election. these laws are useful in terms of giving churches a way to get really involved in kind of registering voters, in doing get out of vote. basically becoming auxiliaries

to one of the political parties. they're working on a nonpartisan issue, just as gay marriage was for jornl bush in 2004. these could be really, really important players. >> you think we're going to see -- you think success on tuesday, augers that this will be replicated in more states despite the fact that parts of the main line, pro life movement are -- >> they've already started. they've passed already the first hurdle for getting it on the ohio ballot. they don't really -- they kind of know that they're not going to be successful on it in these places but they see it as a movement building exercise even if it's doomed to failure. michael, the business insider. what should folks know? >> i think people are trying to wrap their heads around this herman cain phenomenon. >> they certainly are. >> i thought immediately after the politico story broke last

week that there were two settlements, sexual harassment allegations before they went to court, i thought he was over. i thought his boom would end. it didn't. it tells us in sexual harassment scandals, there has to be the face of a woman, an act alleged, an exchange of word. >> some detail. >> otherwise people are disinclined to believe it. they think the only victim is herman cain. there will there are specific details, it's not a sex scandal. as i said during the break, jerry seinfeld on his sitcom tried to say when does it become sex? when the nipple comes out. it's the same thing with a sex scandal. until there's salacious detail that people can latch on to, it looks like a media scandal. >> it's a good point. we were talking about the weird conflicted intuitions about sex scandals, sexual harassment,

affairs, sex outside marriage, sending pictures of yourself on social media. the pure yens of it is a driver and having iconic detail that we had in clarence thomas case, we had in bill clinton. we had with anthony wiener that's absent now and is keeping a lid on it. i want to thank my guests today. michelle goldberg, author of reproduction, sex power and the future of the world. i commend to you. michael brendan doherty who is doing a top job at insider.com. thank you all. thank you at home for joining us. we'll be back next saturday at 7:00 a.m. eastern time. my guests include msnbc's own martin bashir. and new york attorney generic schneiderman. set your dvr's now. i mean it. in the meantime, you can find us on facebook. up next is alex witt.

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