i guess we kneneed some manuals something. what are you suggesting? rick santorum just said this is how it must be this way. right. i don't know what that is and i'm now concerned i'm doing it wrong. i think i'm not going to go there, dylan. you've been a consummate success in that particular area. this is an absurd -- not even a political conversation. this is just a way to make people fight. ridiculous. thank you, martin. the show starts right now. good wednesday afternoon to you. nice to see you. i am dylan ratigan. today's big story the middle east on the brink here. the covert war between israel and iran continues to gain heat and traction. lots of fear as to how it will escalate. what might happen. israel blaming iran for a series of bombings aimed at their

diplomats abroad. iran saying not only did we not do that but that you, israel, have been assassinating our iranian nuclear scientists for years. so a lot of this going on. just today the iranian regime announced it has successfully loaded uraniuim made fuel rods into an aging u.s. designed nuclear research reactor. that reactor mainly used for medical purposes but the point of the demonstration at least as they articulate it is if we can do it here what is stopping us from loading similar rods into other reactors with a different purpose? other reactors that people are speculating about. this one buried it inside an impenetrable mountain in iran. good to get you nice and scared for sure. iran now says they have fully enriched uraniuim bunker. in fact just this fall the u.n. nuclear watch dogs warned that iran is closer than ever to developing a nuclear weapon and for that matter a way to launch it. conventional analysis on all of this rhetoric is that the target for such efforts would be

israel. israel has openly threatened a preemptive attack. at what threshold a development in iran we don't know. that is really the anxiety that everybody is toying with. leon panetta says washington's interests are aligned with israel calling iran a great concern. we've made very clear that they are not to develop a nuclear weapon. we've made very clear that they are not to close the straits of hormuz. we've also made very clear that they are not to export terrorism and try to undermine other governments. do you believe there is a strong likelihood israel will strike iran in april, may, or june? we do not think that israel has made that decision. make no mistake. when you look at the dynamics in the middle east all roads lead back to china. this is not their fault by the way. they are the ones who have the leverage however to intervene. they are the ones who are

preventing even deeper sanctions versus iran for the simple reason that china is largely dependent on iran for much of its oil. in fact, china is one of the top importers of iranian oil trying to keep their country functioning and fully employed. china was the number one importer of iranian oil until just last month when india who was also desperate to bring oil into their country actually found a way to sneak around the iranian sanctions and begin to bring oil into their country from iran. so you've got the leverage to intervene with iran with china. theoretically leverage in the united states to intervene with israel but heat level in that region rising and not falling and at this point no alignment between the united states and china as it pertains to dealing with the middle east. here to help put all of this in context two men have spent plenty of time involved with all of the minutia, tactical,

diplomatic, and sort of high wire acts involved in this. lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer senior fellow at the center for advanced studies led the black ops team in afghanistan. aaron david miller public policy fellow at the woodrow wilson international center who advised six different secretaries of state on arab/israeli negotiations. we assume this is clearly a diplomatic challenge for the moment, a rather intense one and perhaps nerve-racking but where would you begin your diplomacy today understanding the leverage that china would hold in iran, understanding some of the leverage the united states could have in israel, to simply cool this off a little bit? hard to do that, dylan. given the gaps that exist between the united states and iran and the fundamental mistrust collected over a period of the last 40 or 50 years. i mean, there are certain realities. the united states does not control the world. we basically have imposed as

tough sanctions as we've imposed on any nation. you've got cyber attacks. you have assassinations, designed, presumably, others are carrying them out. to delay or retard the iranian nuclear program. but the reality is you've got four countries outside of the five permanent members of the security council, who have nuclear weapons. the indians, the pakistanis, the north koreans, and the israelis. each of them are profoundly insecure and at least three of them are -- feel profoundly entitled. and the iranians clearly fall into that category. they want a weapon to deter a regime change and to cover perhaps their own desires to expand in the region. it's going to be very difficult to stop them. the only mechanism to intervene it would seem, tony, goes to

china and russia. is there any incentive that either of those nations could be brought to -- could be brought to bear that would engage them in helping them to cool some of this off? they are the only answer but the question becomes are they willing? i don't believe they are at this point. this is why. as you just pointed out the chinese are benefiting greatly from the oil. and the russians are not our best friends right now. there is sort of a retelling of the cold war going on. what we have to look at here is ultimately what the iranians are trying to achieve and accept that as a fact. they're following the north korean playbook. the same folks in charge now watched in the '90 aes as did i because i was an operative then. watched the annorth koreans wal us up to the line to where they developed their own nuclear weapon and kept going. we are doing the same thing here again. i would hazard to say we play

the same script. so do the north koreans. don't forget the iranians watch that. they learn from that. they're going to walk us up to the brink as best they can without jeopardizing one thing they're worried about which is regime continuation. the interesting dynamic to continue the metaphor that tony just laid out for us, aaron, if you feel you can accept that framing, in that metaphor south korea would be the most vulnerable to the ambitions in north korea that tony described in the '90 aes and in this case israel would be playing the role of south korea. those who would be most threatened immediately by virtue of this type of a development. at the end of the day, keep that map up for a second. the motivation for iran is not hard to understand. america is a saudi ally. you can see them in the light green map. iran is making its money selling oil out to china, india, and some others that are outside of the sanctions. america is in iraq.

america is in afghanistan. which are two of the keyboarder states for iran. if you are in that iranian situation, is it -- it strikes me that it's not difficult to understand from iran's perspective why it is they're so ambitious to do what tony is describing. or why israel is so obviously concerned about that. again, nuclear weapons are great unless you're forced to deploy them. they're prestige weapons designed to deter and in some respects perhaps to cover an effort to expand their influence. by the way, the israelis aren't the only vulnerable state in the region to iranian pressure. the saudis, the gulf states, i mean they don't call it the persian gulf for nothing. the iranians believe that they are entitled. they are a great power and they are the most important power in that region. they don't have a weapon.

they haven't tested a weapon. they don't have the capacity to produce a weapon yet. but i'm not sure i could answer the question right now how to stop them. even if the israelis chose to unilaterally strike, it would be like mowing the grass. the grass would grow back and this time with more legitimacy and a greater urgency on the part of the iranians in an effort to acquire a weapon. so in the end, unless you change the motivational character of the situation in tehran it seems that effort is going to continue. the dynamic and we can come back for that, the last thing to review today, tony, is this. in the lead up to the iraq war there was an almost alienation, a ridicule, a shaming of anybody who suggested that either the u.n.'s intelligence, the u.s. intelligence or any other form

of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in iraq, that that may lack credibility. i personally as an anchor in new york at msnbc have no idea what iran does or does not have. i am reliant on research reports provided to me here at nbc in the context of the u.n. and nbc news reporting out of the pentagon. to that end, representative keith ellison offered the following comment. he said i think the media of which i am a part is being lured into the same things they got lured into with iraq. what if they being iran are not actually weaponizing. as the buildup for iraq was going on if you were to say publicly i don't think saddam has weapons of mass destruction you'd be laughed out of town. can you give us any assessment as to the quality of the information, we can get ourselves worked up 50 ways and

analyze until we're blue in the face. sure. the bottom line is they're doing it with the same folks who have developed weapons before. the north koreans have taken weapons systems that you can mount nuclear things on and shoot missiles and frankly you've got the chinese and russians both giving technical support. we're talking about in some ways them trying to develop very advanced enp weapons which even the russians had a hard time dealing with. they've never been used in combat but they exist. i think they have got two war heds and don't know what to do with them frankly. that is really irrelevant. i think we need to focus as we've talked about on what the iranians want to do. they are persians, very proud. they want to have this. there is little we can do at this point to deal with military action that would take over 300 sortes to hit the known nuclear facilities. so we need to figure out a smart way out of this and play chess not checkers. listen. let's continue the conversation. i have got a fantasy idea where

we just provoked global nuclear disarmament. not only can iran not have them we're going to use iran's threat as a way to disarm the world. i don't stay up at night hoping that's going to happen. nice to talk to you. coming up on the d.r. show a turf war. auction 2012 coverage of the fight or what was supposed to be a foregone conclusion mitt's michigan. the megapanel weighing in. how is this for an idea? they don't pass a budget being our government, they don't get paid. the congressman who says it's time for lawmakers to actually be held to account for their work. and then, he is known for forcing explosive political debates and now he is tackling america's cultural divide. author charles murray joins us later in the program to talk about what he says is tearing america apart. [ female announcer ] feeling that flu all over your body?

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mitt romney's negative attack machine backs on full throttle and this time romney is firing his mud at rick santorum. romney and his super pac spent a staggering $20 million attacking fellow republicans. that rick santorum's rombo political ad hit the airwaves in michigan 13 days ahead of the primary the santorum campaign trying a new tact tying romney to his super pac. it's out with its own ad today painting santorum as a big spender and a washington insider. in a single session santorum cosponsored 51 bills to increase

spending and zero to cut spending. santorum even voted to raise his own pay and joined hillary clinton to let convicted felons vote. rick santorum, big spender, washington insider. a megapanel time. imogene, jonathan, and rob are with us. again, i watched these ads, jonathan, and i can't help but think about my samurai in the cave three months after the war ended swinging his sword wildly at the wall. here we are with a big spender, insider, and a mud slinger. right. and meanwhile america is on a totally different page that we talk about all the time but it is interesting to watch. right. well, we have to keep in mind something here. you have these two men who are going after not a general electorate but a republican primary voting electorate. and so the messages are very direct, very pointed. you can see that in mitt romney's -- the super pac ad going after rick santorum over

big spending and hillary clinton, all these scary words that are supposed to gin up rage or enthusiasm within the republican party primary electorate. and i'm not sure it's going to work with rick santorum because his -- his brand is not fiscal. it's social. and as we've seen in all of these contests up until now, you know, while people are worried about the economy, rick santorum's appeal is on those social issues. it'll be interesting to see how when you look at, that we're down 30 million jobs, the fact that the wealth and equality numbers are terrible, poverty numbers are really high. unemployment numbers are really high. there is some expectation when you visit communities in this country that the political apparatus in some way will at least be looking at, responding to, attempting to respond to, pretending to respond to, making up, making a little picture where you appear to be responding to any of these

issues and yet what we're seeing from the political apparatus is it's like they're out to lunch. well, we're looking at those ads. there are others. of course. that's fair. there is a santorum ad where he talks about made in america and bringing back, you know, he has this idea that you have -- you reduced taxes for companies that manufacture. now, that does resonate i imagine. yes. in a place like ohio. absolutely. or michigan where he is doing quite well relative to a romney who talks, you know, he wrote a piece in "the detroit news" how unions screwed everything up and how do we get here. right. there is some -- while i agree with jonathan he is not a fiscal candidate, he is doing his darnedest right now to really reach out to those people in those swing states. with the lower taxes for investment. right. make stuff here and everything will be better. go ahead. just the fact these ads exist is not very dignified. america has never been dignified. i expect better of you. maybe i'm getting cynical.

i've been listening to you for months. you don't like the guns? i don't like the guns but i am pro birth control and pro gun control so face it i'm anti-santorum on every level. i could make every room in america fight over guns, sex, gay marriage. those issues were invented to prevent you from agreeing to the 90% of the things we all agree to like not having two set of rules for a tax code, not having two sets of rules for a trade policy, not having two sets of rules in the banking system, not having an energy plan. what they do is basically stick one of these wedge issues in our craw, have us bark like a bunch of chickens if chickens could bark. right. then we don't deal with it. anyway, moving to another sort of interesting idea, worth talking about, there is a congressman named bill johnson, republican out of ohio. we're going to ohio next week by the way. trying to study up on ohio. i'm coming. are you? yeah. he wants to introduce a bill

called an act called the pass a budget act. there's your friendly neighborhood congressman right there. if the capacity budget act passed, passed cuts to pay for members of congress. if a budget is not passed, by their respective chamber, they don't get a paycheck. your job as a represent if of america as our friend bill johnson says it, robert, is to administrate america's business the least of which is to operate any business if anybody runs a small business in this country or their own household or their own individual accounts or anything else. any psychologist or economist -- economics professor will tell you -- whatever you call them. econometrician -- but any will tell you the incentives shape behavior. if you create a disincentive not

to do your job and i believe it is an important function of congress then this makes sense. it was actually -- california wanted to do this last year. there were wrinkles around it and they basically did it. jerry brown vetoed a budget. two weeks later they had a budget. it works. you withhold their pay -- not just these people any people. any group of people you put incentives in front of them and enforce them and it'll change behavior. i am bringing a quote to the table. all right. from margaret thatcher. wow. the iron lady. the iron lady. any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country. and she was all about housekeeping, good housekeeping. and when she arrived in britain it was known as a set man of europe. she practiced what she preached. last year she had a massive argument with the civil service about an ironing board and she insisted on redoing her own apartment and paying for things

like an ironing board. she practiced what she preached and the nation saw. that is what needs to happen in america and it might well do so? which goes to what we -- how is the snaens we argue who, what, when, where and how all day but how is the answer? and this piece of legislation is an attempt to change some of the how. be honest with us. this is never going to happen is it? absolutely. that is what i was going to say. it is a great piece of legislation. it should happen. but we're talking about the very same congress that was staring economic apocalypse in the face and actually threatened to not raise the debt ceiling. so you think they're going to put their pay checks on the line because they're not doing their jobs? i mean -- not only that. they have no incentive to do it. right. because the gerrymandered districts and closed primaries make it such that 80% of the time every incumbent politician is re-elected. right. so if there is any chance that you could lose your job but

because i've got a republican district, gerrymandered for republicans -- you still won't get paid if you don't pass the budget. that is the good thing. right. but what i'm saying is as long as you are in no threat of losing your job why are you going to pass the disclose act or this? like we've got it worked out where they can't fire us being the electorate because of the gerrymandering and the closed primaries so as a result i say we legalize insider trading, don't pass a budget and take the money. take secret money. i mean, because of that detachment, anyway, if i haven't gotten you fully inspired yet, please stick around. coming up, j.p. morgan's jamie dimon making a revealing admission about the occupy movement. ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 let's talk about the cookie-cutter retirement advice ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 you get at some places.

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well the height of the occupy movement this fall hundreds of protesters marched to the door steps of one of the city's wealthiest including jp morgan chief executive jamie dimon's home. in one recent interview he revealed he wasn't even there. >> that particular day i was in lebanon, beirut doing business over there and probably safer over there, too. >> there has been a lot of talk about the 99% and of course the 1%. well, today's specialist and i'm with him, is all for the 100%. the idea of one set of rules for every american, equal opportunity, and sustainable capitalism with capital in it. mike mayo is not only a banking analyst but one of the most revered and followed banking analysts in the past few decades on wall street. one of the most influential for shareholders and one of the most beneficial to his firms. mike is sporting today his 100%

tie that his daughter made for him. he made known from his book "ex-i"ex "exile on wall street." what does being the 100% mean to you, mike? >> let's have an economic system that brings along the hundred percent. a system that's fair where we hold people accountable with economic justice, where government works well with business and you have leadership and you don't have politics over economics. i think a hundred percent would agree with those ideals. >> do you agree with that idea? >> it was a wonderful idea. absolutely. dylan is all about "greedy bastards." is there a particular greedy bastard you think really should go at the moment who is still in power in the big banks? >> on page six of my book i talk about the chairman of citigroup. it's really coming down to not greedy or not in this case but accountability. who do we hold accountable for last decade, citigroup had the highest ceo compensation in place and the worst stock price

performance among banks. who was head of the compensation committee for most of that time? the chairman of citigroup today. while he has been chairman they've had all sorts of problems and he is still overseeing a company that i feel has a rigged compensation package for senior executives. we can talk about the housing crisis, the mortgage settlement, and everything else. i'm talking about here today in 2012 this is a first and the chairman of citigroup -- this is a person, the chairman of citigroup, who should be gone. >> dick parsons wasn't chairman when all that happened. he was on the compensation committee. >> he ran the compensation committee and his point is he was the one basically -- >> authorized all the money leaving. >> rubber stamped all this money for people like ruben. but over the last couple of years it has been certainly paid to have a separation of the chairman and ceo roles of the company. are you suggesting that vikram pandit becomes chairman and ceo? what are you suggesting? if you got rid of dick parsons what is the solution? >> get another chairman separate

from vikram pandit. i applaud citigroup's separation of chairman and ceo but you need a chairman who can get the job done. this chairman has not. there are a couple people on the board, mike o'neill would be one. there are some others. by the way, i put out a note saying this and not one investor came back and said you're wrong, mike. several investors, major investors go to work every day thinking about these issues, and what's taking so long? he shouldn't be in place anymore. all the company has to do is talk to the owners of the company or potential owners and they'd come to the same conclusion. >> what would be the value to wall street, to the political environment, to the hundred percent movement, to citigroup of displacing somebody like mr. parsons? >> the big issue and you know this. >> sure. >> whether it's the occupy wall street or other people in the outside, there is a view that our financial system is rigged. so if somebody is not getting the job done, by getting rid of someone at the top, and it's not like he has a choice, by getting

rid of someone at the top you send a signal. you send a signal to the other 200,000 citigroup employees that will hold people accountable if you're not getting the job done. you send a signal to the rest of the banking industry and a signal to the outsiders that business as usual has changed. and let's just take one step at a time. we start with citigroup whether it's 500 companies in the fortune 500, let's go company by company, chairman by chairman, ceo by ceo and hold people accountable. >> very briefly i want jonathan in. what is your criteria? what would the criteria be that would get you to richard parsons in the first place specifically and how might you look at other companies through that lens? >> i mean you look at the specific job that they've had so one simple criteria i've always used is what has the stock price done since a person has been ceo? how is compensation related to performance? >> so a lot of money as the stock price goes down? that is a bad sign? >> that is a really bad sign. >> that's what richard parsons is guilty of. >> what happened with richard

parsons is that when he was head of the compensation committee paying, overseeing enormous payouts that is when citigroup had issues with enron and wormd com and endless conflicts of interest and the japanese private bank had all sorts of issues. then you had the housing crisis. with all these violations, they still paid a lot of people a lot of money. so the issue is well the big bank -- >> it is a custom environment every time basically. >> but it's still taking place today. that's the point of my book is that the culture still hasn't changed and all these solutions amount to putting a band-aid on a broken leg. >> i could not agree more. jonathan, go ahead. >> well, then, mike, is there anyone, you mentioned one name at citigroup but is there anyone else within the industry who meets your criteria who could come in and not be a greedy bastard? and can that person succeed if the laws aren't there in order to help that person change the culture in wall street? is it a person or is it the law

that needs to change? >> well, i think you could set a tone for the top. that's what's important about the role of a chairman. you send a signal. citigroup has corporate governance guidelines and i feel several senior executives have violated those guidelines. you go in there and you say we're going ahead and take extra reserves against these legal issues and we're going to hold some other people accountable for the mistakes and we're going to resolve some other legal issues so the key here is sending a signal from the top and we need that at the top of citigroup, the top of the industry. some ceos have tried to do that. we need that at the top of our country for that matter. i know dylan agrees with this. the political leadership needs to send a signal not just they're going to go after people from 2007, 2008. sure if someone broke the law you have to go after them but we'll send a signal that today we'll have companies run for the interests of other than those at the top of these companies. in fact the s.e.c. should make it easier for shareholders to go ahead and have a say and literally just today a top

investor sent me an e-mail and said i'm giving up trying to influence these corporations because they're just managers. i'm going to be doing other things. >> it's interesting if you think of that because if you look at the political problem in america, talking about money in politics, that is not really down to the root right? the root really is the electoral districts are not actually in play 80% of the time and as a result the politicians are totally disconnected from the voters and can do whatever the special interests that is manipulating them is. in your world, the shareholder is increasingly disconnected from the management of the publicly traded company which allows the manager of the publicly traded company to be more abusive, more misaligned not only with the company, with its employees, and with its shareholders. the more we have shareholders connected to management the more they're connected, the more we have voters connected to politicians, the less we get this sort of contact and it's interesting i think frustrating for a lot of us because we watch the current trend to make

shareholders and voters less connected as opposed to more connected. i thank you for teaching us. >> the biggest surprise in my book and i think you've heard this, too, is not that the protester type says we agree about all the abuses. it's that many investors, people on wall street, are fed up and they say you don't know the half of it. these people are getting away with way too much and the few people really abusing the system are ruining it for the rest of us. >> and it is literally 20 or 30 guys or gals involved in the vast majority of the distortions we're talking about that millions of people and thousands of employees are paying the price for the collaboration of the giant banks themselves fannie, freddie, ratings agencies and a couple others and really the rest of the room on wall street is either out to lunch relative to what this is or thinks they're doing something that is completely different than what this is. your work is incredibly important and we appreciate your doing it and your being as public about it as you are, mike. thank you very much. let's see your tie on the way out. mike mayo's daughter when she

clears child labor laws will be available with her own line of fashion. we have a big announcement for you about the next leg of our 30 million jobs tour. we promised on wednesday. it's wednesday. next week the college edition of the tour and here's the schools that we are headed to beginning one week from today. drum roll if you don't mind. thank you so much. on wednesday of next week we're off to the university of kentucky with the simple goal of matching graduating students with jobs. it shouldn't be that hard. but you'd be surprised. thursday we're off to ohio state to talk about the cost of college and how all of that debt is preventing the necessary culture of experimentation that we need from our 18 to 28-year-olds. finally on friday we wrap up in the windy city at the university of chicago, the belly of the beast of the very thinking that mike mayo and myself have been criticizing. we are going in to find out what's going on over there and putting some of the capital back into capitalism. the 30 million jobs tour rolling

on. we do hope you'll join us for the next edition of it. after this here, a break from all of this heavyweighty talk of politics and money for some sports. biff ratigan is back covering the new kid in town. yes lin-sanity has arrived at the "d.r. show." ♪ so don't let them down ♪ you look in her eyes the music begins to play ♪ brad needs car insurance, but, uh, brad doesn't want to spend too much.

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well, biff ratigan here with the latest on the story dominati dominating. try that again. biff ratigan with the latest on the story dominating the sports landscape, lin-sanity. he went endemmic last night spreading across the border and into canada. the former harvard store has been cut twice this season alone. carving up the rafters with 24 points, 11 assists, when the

knicks put the ball in his hands, with a shot clock winding down. >> lin puts it up! he lands it from downtown! and the knicks take the lead! >> last night's performance breaking shaquille o'neal's record for the most points scored by any player in their first five nba starts. now it seems everyone has caught the lin-sanity. knicks games have become huge viewing events here around the city. in fact he gave the raptors their second sellout crowd of the season. even the president of the united states has been talking lin and our own cable news host "new york times" best selling author dylan ratigan fired up about the underdog in his interview tuesday with radio personality brian lair. >> certainly everybody in new york is completely consumed by it and i think well beyond new york at this point the narrative that is represented behind what

really are almost fundamental american ideals, right, which is this concept that if you can illustrate a capacity to do something well in america you cannot only create value and be rewarded in your community but that you will become a beacon of hope for everybody else in america that they, too, might be able to achieve that type of an experience. >> wow. what a mouthful from that guy. tonight the knicks phenomenon will try to keep the best story in sports rolling as the hometown team takes on the sacramento kings here at the garden this biff ratigan signing off. dylan will be back with some news after this. # [ tom ] we invented the turbine business right here in schenectady. without the stuff that we make here,

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. our next guest is no stranger to controversy as the author of "losing ground" and "the bell curve." his new book tackles one of the most difficult issues facing america today, the class divide. in fact, he says that the gap between the classes has widened so much that the two classes if you want to call them that barely recognize their ties to each other as common citizens in a common nation anymore. it's why last week in austin we tackled the only problem all americans rebel against in their community. the existence of two sets of rules. one for those that can afford, purchase, and influence rule making, and another set of rules for those who can't. >> i think there are two sets of rules. i think most americans are

starting to understand that. >> i really think there is an us vs. them. the tea party, they look at big government. occupy wall street looks at big corporations and wall street. it's the collusion of the two, the concentration of power to the point now where we have 400 people in this country that have as much wealth as half the population, 155 million people. >> those two men have nothing in common. mark mekler from the tea party patriots, david degraw one of the original occupiers in zuccotti park and one of the founders of the 99% movement. and yet the two men could not agree more over the most pressing issue that faces our collective country today -- the existence of two sets of rules in our communities, our states, and ultimately in our federal government. our next guest says that we've been creating this situation in our own country through all of these little decisions we make every day and all of these communities large and small over

the past 50 years. charles murray is the author of "coming apart, the state of white america 1960 to 2010" in his effort to show the widening gap of influence, affluence, and the quality of life between classes murray strips away race and ethnicity ultimately from the conversation. interested in your thoughts from both mark mekler of the tea party patriots, conservative guy. >> mm-hmm. >> and david degraw. >> the occupy guy. >> original zuccotti park occupier full on anti-bank activist. the two men met for the first time in texas with our road show. incredible agreement on this particular issue. >> i think this is fascinating. i've been saying the tea party and occupy movement both have a handle on the same phenomenon but never actually seeing them brought together like you just showed them. yeah. there is a sense that at the top there is a group that's increasingly isolated from the rest of america, increasingly

ignorant, a lot of times there is a sense they don't care much about the rest of america. and you can come at it from either side of the political divide which is exactly what i want to see happening because i don't think this book is a partisan book in that sense. i think it speaks for everybody. >> what is your intent? having just written the only book of my life and having it be the most physically challenging, painful, psychologically torturous experience i've ever had i can only imagine you must have had a very specific -- i had a very good reason i wanted to write the book i wrote. i presume to publish something like this you have a goal. >> i've been watching this for a long time. i live in a small town in rural maryland and also worked in the washington elite group and i can see these -- the two worlds don't interact. and you can see that not primarily economically. i'm not denying the economic inequality. i am saying there are cultural separations that are alien to the american tradition. >> give me a couple examples. >> oh, you can go all the way

down the line from things like child raising practices in the new upper class versus the rest of the country, the age at which they marry, and the kinds of beer they drink. they would never drink a budweiser or a pabst or schlitz or something like that to the amount of television they watch. here is a good example. the average american watches 35 hours of television a week. in the new upper class a lot of times they'll brag they don't even have a television anymore or if they do they watch masterpiece theater. they are completely unexposed to a massive source of culture out there. it's not good versus bad. it's isolation that bothers me. >> and do you offer a path to -- our sort of big premise really coming out of austin and the experience of mark mekler and david degraw and ben chavis and russell simmons and tim dunn who was a west texas oil man, conservative, leads the right on crime group out of west texas, is this need to go back to one set of rules in every community in america. >> yes. >> that has consistency across the -- that is sort of being the

100% -- and also restoring our own communities, that dealing with the crime issue, dealing with your local hospital, dealing with your local educational system in a way that models what is being shown to us by people like david kennedy on crime or dr. brenner on health or solomon kahn on education. i am interested in your thoughts on that as a repair mechanism because it is the conversation i've been having with these other characters. >> it is interesting here because i'm sure we're on different parts of the political spectrum. >> sure. >> i want us to go back to communities, running their lives in ways they have -- >> community restoration. >> yeah. there is a reason to be optimistic about this. when i talk about these issues, i get a lot of instinctive understanding. when i talk to people who are very affluent and powerful, a lot of them are saying, you know what? i see that in my life and i especially see it in my kids' lives. i see the extent to which they're drawing up with what a sense of what this country is

about so i don't think we need to demonize that group. i think within that group there are a lot of people who sense the nature of the problem. >> i agree. >> and once the problem is in a sense agreed upon across a wide range of political views then we can start talking about solutions. >> right. but even in i guess in lieu of that waiting, what i'm seeing is -- >> what do you do in the meantime? >> what i'm seeing, david kennedy is out working with right and left wing groups to do community restoration and crime. >> yes. >> jeffrey brenner in camden, new jersey. amazing physician. working with both -- any political person who doesn't care. he wants to hot spot those hospitals. i guess my message to our audience, to myself, to you and everybody else is we are seeing people do this which is just more room for encouragement. >> another example of encouragement is that, well, we're running out of time so i won't bother to go to it. >> that is a good tease. >> okay. >> charles murray's words of encouragement on the internet later tonight. coming apart is the book.

thank you so much for the conversation. i think a lot of us are realizing the same things. regardless of our, whatever our political orientations may be. coming up "hardball" chris matthews with more on rick santorum and mitt romney's head-to-head fight from michigan. [ male announcer ] this is lois. the day starts with arthritis pain... a load of new listings... and two pills. after a morning of walk-ups, it's back to more pain, back to more pills. the evening showings bring more pain and more pills. sealing the deal... when, hang on... her doctor recommended aleve. it can relieve pain all day with fewer pills than tylenol. this is lois... who chose two aleve and fewer pills for a day free of pain. [ female announcer ] try aleve d for strong all day sinus and headache relief. [ sighs ] i can't wait till morning. wait! it's morning in china!

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well our facebook friend is here with a status update. >> thanks, dylan. as you all know, facebook has now filed papers to go public. wall street analysts believe this company could be worth $100 billion and lots of early

executives are cashing in. but let's think for a minute. why exactly is facebook worth so much money? its current revenues of a few billion dollars don't support this valuation. but facebook owns something that can make a lot more money down the road. it owns us. i don't mean that as a metaphor. i mean the company's terms of use policy, the contract you have to click on when you sign up, gives the company legal rights to the photos, information, and data of its users. and because facebook is so popular and easy to use it is basically crowd sourced the largest, most valuable data base known to man. the cia and old school surveillance can't compete with a social network that makes users competitive about sharing. for the most part the users don't seem to mind. there have been a few back lashes which you might remember like when facebook basically took too much personal information and monetized it, the creepy social ads where they said oh, you went to this restaurant and tried to turn it into an advertisement.

people didn't like that. for the most part i think it looks like people have been ignoring or accepting the site's tradeoffs. there is an old saying on the internet that there are no free services online. when the product is free, you're not the customer. you are the product. now facebook may be a product that's worth a hundred billion dollars and i think it says a lot about our acquiescence that facebook users don't even expect a cut. dylan? >> there is an interesting dynamic that is some of the entrepreneurs down in austin were sharing with me which is a new business model they're calling the lp 3. which, and i haven't looked into it. i would invite our audience to do the same thing. i am looking into it. i invite you to do so. it basically says the community has value. we have proven the community has value. but the capital markets are still exploiting the community which this is an example of. do you think people acknowledge communities have a value proposition? >> i think that is the big question whether an lp