tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC July 11, 2012 12:00am-1:00am EDT
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was in office. the gop elephant stampeding, right? stampeding. if you look under the elephant's foot, the elephant is destroying the democratic donkey, making the donkey pfsz eyeballs pop out on bloody stalks. that's what you get in terms of imagery in the press when you pick up 54 seats in the house. 54. you want to know how many seats swung to the republicans in the past election? 63. nine more seats than the republicans won in their big elephant squishing the donkey landslide in 1994. the past election in 2010 went deep, deep red. they won the governorships in 29 of 50 states. they won more seats in state they won more seats in state legislatures than since 1968. they won 63 seats in the house. look at this. look at this, the republicans did great in both of these midterm elections, 1994 and
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2010. whatever party the president is, his party tends to lose seats the next time people get to vote. it happens almost every time. when you compare what happened in the first midterm under president clinton to what happened under president obama in his first midterm, look what happened in the senate. the republicans did not get much this time around in the senate. even as their landslide got bigger in the house, it shrunk a little bit in the senate. why did that happen? that happened because i am not a witch happened. the republicans were so cocky that they would be able to run the table in the 2010 elections that they picked some koo koo for cocoa puffs candidates. they picked really, really out there far right candidates for the senate in a bunch of states in 2010, and those candidates did not win, even in that bright red year. so the democrats held the senate in 2010. i mean, there was i am not a witch christine o'donnell in delaware. there was second amendment remedies sharon ingle in nevada. she threatened if she did not
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unseat harry reid in the senate, conservative voters would start shooting people to get what they wanted instead. there was also this guy, in colorado, his name was ken buck. >> why should we vote for you? >> why should you vote for me? because i do not wear high heels. >> is it constitutional for the government to have a social security program where it directs the moneys we put into it? let me tell you, i don't know whether it's constitutional or not. it's certainly a horrible policy. >> are you for abortion or against abortion, if you're for it, what instances? >> i'm pro life, and i'll answer the next question. i don't believe in the exceptions of rape or incest. >> i don't believe in the exceptions for rape or incest. ken buck did not become a u.s. senator from colorado. in a state that is closely divided anyway, in a year where republicans frank lehad to try to lose, in an election where republicans won just about everything, ken buck could not win against a democrat named michael bennet.
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that was part because michael bennet made sure he came across as a real extremist on the issue of abortion. >> candidate supported criminalizing abortion in cases of rape and incest. my question is who is going to go to jail, ken? who's going to go to jail? when you criminalize abortion in cases of rape and incest, who is going to jail? >> i'll tell you, senator, i don't think abortion is going to be criminalized anytime soon? >> you support it. >> let me answer the question, you have once again tried to take this debate off topic. >> ken buck had no idea what to say. to being put on the spot like that by michael bennet. he did support making abortion a criminal offense, even for women who were made pregnant by a rapist or by incest. but as to what the prison term should be if a woman does get an abortion under those circumstances, he has no response. you're changing the subject. ken buck lost that election
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badly, even when republicans won everything else. ken buck lost among women voters in colorado by 17 points. that was only two years ago, but you know what, times have changed. now if you ask a republican politician how long the jail term should be for an abortion, now they'll just tell you. they're not dodging it anymore like ken buck did. republican congressman trent franks has an abortion ban working its way through the house of representatives this week. it's a federal ban but it's specifically targeted to women in washington, d.c. you do not need to ask trent franks who goes to jail for his abortion ban. it's right there in the bill. doctors should go to jail. doctors should spend up to two years in prison. bobby jindal signed a similar bill into law in louisiana last month. it will send doctors to prison also up to two years. asking a republican with a really extreme anti-abortion position who's going to go to jail?
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that used to be a really dramatic rhetorical devise. you would never go on record talking about throwing people in jail for abortion. but this, this sounds too crazy for me to say it meter is recalibrated. that has changed, even just since 2010. jailing people for abortion is no longer a step over the line of wing-nuttism, even for main stream republican rhetoric. main stream republican legislation. that same seen as coo coo has been happening in the great state of mississippi this year. in april, the republican governor of mississippi signed into law what is known as a t.r.a.p. law. t.r.a.p., in this case, stands for targeted regulation of abortion providers. and the acronym is not an accident. new laws, new red tape and regulations that only apply to abortion providers.
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they're making it harder to be an abortion provider. they're laws that are designed to and intend to shut clinics down. but the folks who propose and pass and sign t.r.a.p. laws don't usually call them that. they try to pretend something else is going on. they try to frame the issue as something having to do with safety and protecting vulnerable women who need protecting. that's how t.r.a.p. laws used to go down, anyway, but things have changed and in today's republican party in the great state of mississippi, at least, you do not have to hide behind the health and safety stuff anymore, you don't have to pretend all you care about is safety for women. you can come out and say you're trying to shut down the only abortion clinic in the state by way of targeted regulation. that's what phil bryant did when he signed the law in april, targeting the state's only clinic. >> i think it's historic that today you see the first step in
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a movement, i believe, to do what we campaigned on, to say we're going to try to end abortion in mississippi. we're going to try to work to end abortion in mississippi, and this is an historic day to begin that process. >> signing the state's new law was a step toward a campaign promise to end abortion in mississippi. the lieutenant -- that was the governor, the lieutenant governor was also open and excited about using the law in mississippi to ban abortion by shutting down that clinic. >> it's been seven years since we got good pro life legislation passed out of the mississippi legislature. that's a bill that gives us a great opportunity to accomplish what our goal needs to be. our goal needs to be to end all abortions in mississippi. i believe the admitting privileges bill gives us the best chance to do that. >> the admitting privileges bill.
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the new t.r.a.p. law. republicans admit they think it's their best chance at banning abortion in an american state. >> we have literally stopped abortion in the state of mississippi. the only -- the only clinic in the state of mississippi. a bill was drafted, it said if you were to perform an abortion in the state of mississippi, you must be a certified ob/gyn and have admitting privileges to a hospital. do you know how hard it is? it's going to be challenged in the supreme court. literally, we stopped abortion in the state of mississippi legally without having to do roe v. wade. and on the other side, they're like, the poor pitiful women who can't afford to go out of state are going to do it at home with a coat hanger. that's what we heard over and over and over. but you have to have more values. you have to start somewhere and
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that's what we decided to do. >> have to start somewhere. by this time tomorrow in the next 24 hours, the anti-abortion movement and republicans may for the first time ever have succeeded in banning abortion in an american state. last week on the day this new mississippi law was set to go into effect, a federal judge in mississippi blocked the law with a temporary restraining order. temporary. that temporary order expires after a hearing scheduled for 1:00 p.m. central time in mississippi tomorrow. if the judge does not rule tomorrow to keep blocking the implementation of that law, it's going to go into effect immediately, and the doctors at the state's only abortion clinic will be required to have admitting privileges at a hospital. they don't have the admitting privileges at a local hospital. that's why the law was designed that way. the clinic owner told us the doctors have applied buzz they haven't gotten any world back. it's not an easy thing. medical researcher recently pointed out to the folks at bloomberg news, to grant privileges, they require doctors
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to live within a short distance of the hospital and to admit a minimum number of patients a year, often ten or more. a typical abortion provider would rarely admit more than one patient a year, and in many years would have no complications requiring hospitalization at all. so the thing you need to get admitting privileges you can't get if you're an abortion doctor. so we'll require you to have admitting privileges. that will be the excuse we use to shut down the last clinic in the state, and thereby ban abortion. now that a federal judge is deciding on whether or not this is an illegal effort by the state to ban abortion, the governor and the state republicans who we played tape of earlier, they're trying to back track on some of the earlier language about wanting to and intending to ban abortion in the state, but they're on record. exactly what they're trying to
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do. exactly what they might be just about to do depending on whether this judge does in mississippi tomorrow. with only one clinic left in the state, republicans shutting down the one clinic by hook or crook, that's all it takes. if they succeed in what they do, it's becoming important to know, beyond mississippi, there are four other states in our country that are in the same boat. four other states with there's only one abortion clinic left. if the state legislature and governor come up with one way to shut that clinic, they will have banned abortion in that state without overturning roe v. wade. there are four other states just like it who only have one clinic who could try to ban abortion in the exact same way. and three of those four are under unilateral control of the republican party. joining us now is nancy, president and ceo of the center for reproductive rights, representing the jackson health organization in the case against mississippi. >> thank you for following the story. >> i'm following it intensely as you may be able to tell from my
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wordy introduction. in ways i explain it, you're very involved in the case, did i get anything wrong? >> no, this law is designed to shut down the one clinic in the state. they know that the doctors are from out of state, that it's going to be very hard for them to get admitting privileges in the state because they set it up not to be fair. you know, if it were a case that they were going to measure the admitting privileges based on experience, based on quality of care, dr. parker has admitting privileges where he practices outside the state of miss mis, but they know he's not going to get it in mississippi. that's the whole point of the law. >> are techniques like these, and a number of states have tried these with a number of different angles and they have been more or less successful in shutting down clinics in their state by using these techniques, broadly speaking, is this a legal way to effectively ban a procedure that is otherwise technically legal? >> it's not a legal way. it's unconstitutional.
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we'll be in court tomorrow arguing that because the purpose of this law, and you went through what the governor said, the lieutenant governor said, the bill sponsor said, is their intent is to stop the abortion privileges in the state of mississippi, and the supreme court has made clear that laws that have the purpose or effect of blocking women's access to abortion services are unconstitutional. they can't do through the back door what they can't do directly. >> if the judge tomorrow in mississippi does not extend the temporary restraining order or take some other action that has that effect, what's the practical effect, presuming mississippi's clinic closes in short order? >> it closes its doors. it can't continue to provide services on a day after they don't get the injunction in place. the law's in effect, it has criminal penalties and the doctors could not go forward with providing the services until or unless the judge blocks the law.
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>> how did mississippi get to be a state with only one abortion clinic in it? >> it's a state with a long history of hostility. one of the provisions of the law, the ob/gyn requirement was by a court in the '90s. it has tried again and again and again in every way it can. it tried to put a personhood on the ballot last year, and that was too extreme. >> by a large margin. >> but nevertheless, they're back this year trying to block the constitutional right of the women of mississippi to make them in effect second-class citizens. >> in terms of the overall fight here, we have seen since the landslide election in 2010, there's been an avalanche since then of anti-abortion legislature in the states. hr-3 in the house was an anti-abortion bill and they're still working on it, but in the states, it's been a phenomenal tide. as someone who is fighting on the mississippi case directly, is there a way for your side to play offense or at this point, is it -- is defense all you can do to try to stop the
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anti-abortion regulations that are being pushed in the republican controlled legislatures? >> i would say by going to court, we're going on the offense. i mean, we had victory after victory after victory in states this year, including three in oklahoma alone, and in those decisions, the courts are reaffirming that women have a constitutional right to access abortion services within north dakota, we got a state court to rule it's a fundamental right in north dakota and it was violated in that case. what we're seeing is the courts are standing up and in this way, it's also getting the attention, i mean, we're drawing the line. it's waking up the pro choice public, and we need to have stronger rights protection. we need the same protection for women in mississippi as they have in new york. and we're going to keep on fighting this fight until we insure every woman in the united states has the same right to access abortion services that the supreme court has
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guaranteed. >> is it important to you to see the white house, the president's re-election campaign running ads on the issue of protecting reproductive rights, to see the president saying i will protect reproductive rights and mitt romney will not. does that matter to your overall project? >> what matters to us, and we focus on the courts, it matters that people understand that whoever gets elected, we need to protect our rights, that it's fundamental, that politicians can come and go, but access to abortion services cannot come and go. it has to be fundamental. that's what it means to be a fundamental right, and we're going to be working in the courts and we need to make sure we get protection, and you know what, the public is stand up for that, too. >> nancy, president and ceo for the center for reproductive rights. representing the last clinic in mississippi in its lawsuit. we're awaiting that ruling tomorrow eagerly. it's a really important case. thank you for being here.
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and it looks pretty serious. this is new york state. we built the first railway, the first trade route to the west, the greatest empires. then, some said, we lost our edge. well today, there's a new new york state. one that's working to attract businesses and create jobs. a place where innovation meets determination... and businesses lead the world. the new new york works for business. find out how it can work for yours at thenewny.com. on the night of july 15th, 2010, this is how we opened the show.
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a big night. >> what you're looking at right here is something we have never seen before. this is the camera on the sea floor at the site of the deep horizon oil disaster showing the well not spewing oil into the gulf of mexico. for the first time in 87 days. >> for more than three months, residents of the gulf coast and all over the country watched in a state of prolonged horror as hundreds of thousands of gallons of black, sticky, toxic crude oil flowed into a treasured body of water. the bp oil spill. we sat essentially helpless as one of the richest corporations the planet has ever known tried and failed and tried and failed and then tried and failed again to contain let alone stop that leak in the gulf of mexico. but finally, after 87 long days, the country could at least start to breathe again. the flow of oil had been stopped. that was july 15th. that feeling of momentary relief, that feeling that we could finally exhale, that lasted all of 12 days. before here we go again. >> with the current sensitivity about oil, a spill in michigan
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is getting a lot of attention. a leaking pipeline that sent oil into a creek that feeds the kalamazoo river and while booms have been deployed, an estimated 848,000 gallons of oil is already escaped. trails of oil sheen can be seen all the way down the river, far from the bulk of the spill. >> less than two weeks after bp finally managed to plug their leaking well in the gulf of mexico, it happened again. instead of pb this time, the was a canadian company, and instead of watching the people of louisiana and mississippi and florida begin to fear for their own livelihood, now it was the people of michigan, the kalamazoo river was in an instant transformed into a sea of oil. a 30-inch pipeline that ran
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beneath the surrounding wetlands sent oil rushing into the kalamazoo river, sent communities into a state of emergency. >> about 877,000 gallons of oil have spilled out into the creek here near the kalamazoo river. i spoke with an official with the state, and they say this may be the worst oil spill ever in the midwest. >> what happens along the kalamazoo river in michigan two years ago would soon become the single most expensive onshore oil spill in history. that's because there's one key difference between what happened off the coast of louisiana, what happened in over oil spills and what happened in michigan two weeks later. what happened off the gulf coast is what we have sadly become accustomed do dealing with. it's a crude oil spill. we're not very good at cleaning up crude oil, but we have experience doing that. but what happened in michigan was not crude oil. it was something called tar sands oil. it was being transported from
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canada, and as it turns out, we have no freaking clue how to clean up tar sands oil when that spills. crude oil generally floats to the top of it water where some of it can be scrapes off. tar sands oil sinks to the bottom of whatever it's in. how do you get it off the bottom of a riverbed? good question. they saw their pristine river turned into a test bed for how to clean up the oil spills. the best they could come up with was to literally shake the river bed, to agitate the river bed with big machines in order to try to make the oil temporarily rise to the top where they could get at it. sorry, michigan, that's all we've got. ultimately, the people who lived along the kalamazoo river didn't have to wait one month, two months, four months, five
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months, six months. it took the oil company two years to clean up the mess they made in michigan. that oil spill happened in july 2010. it was not until three weeks ago this year that the kalamazoo river reopened to the public and it reopened despite the fact there is still oil submerged beneath the oil bed. they got their river back, significantly worse for wear. and today, today, they got to learn what happened in the first place, way back in 2010 on the day that giant spill turned their lives upside down. the ntsb, the national transportation safety board released findings of their investigation into what happened in that spill. they found that the oil company responsible for that pipeline knew about cracks in that particular stretch of pipeline a full five years before the pipe ruptured. quoting the ntsb, for five years, they did nothing to address the corrosion or
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cracking at the rupture site. but wait, it gets worse. the investigation also revealed that it took the oil company, this company, it took them a good 17 hours before they even realized that one of their own pipes had burst. and in that time, they pumped more than 600,000 gallons of oil through the ruptured pipeline and right into the river. they also found that enbridge employees did not have adequate skills to deal with the leaks, the company didn't bother making sure enough resources were in place to respond to a spill like this, and thanks to lax regulations, they never had to lay out how they would deal with a worst case scenario. >> this accident was a result of multiple mistakes and missteps by enbridge. safety is a commitment. it is a requirement. it must be a way of doing business and not just a slogan. if companies can commit to safety with the same vigor that they pursue profits, then we will see integrity management programs with real integrity.
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>> if companies commit to safety with the same vigor they pursue profits. is that even possible? enbridge for their part responded today saying they met all regulatory standards at the time of the kalamazoo oil spill. if that's true, if that's not an endorsement for more and better regulation of this particular industry, it's hard to imagine what would be. as used as director, we can make a spill like this and it takes two years to clean it up. this week, the week we were reminding how incapable we are of cleaning up oil when it spills, this week is also the week when we learn that the oil sands industry is launching a new campaign telling you how great tar sands are. not only how great they are, but when there's a spill involving tar sands oil, it's no big deal. if you care to join us for a glass full of the july 2010 kalamazoo river while we talk
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election in which the democrats took control of the senate. they tried to recall scott walker as well. while that effort did not work, the democrats' effort to take back the senate did, except for one exception. republicans have not been willing to give it up. they wouldn't let the democrats take over. until today. the republican who lost his seat and thereby lost the republican party's control of the senate in wisconsin had been threatening to file a lawsuit over his race, thus keeping the legislature in limbo indefinitely, but today, he decided he would get out of the way. when that one senator's election is finally certified tomorrow, the democratic takeover of the senate in wisconsin will be certified. everybody thought the era of one-party republican rule in wisconsin was over a month ago, but in actuality, it's over tomorrow and then the real fight
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starts to see if the democrats can do anything with the senate that the voters have just given back to them. [ male announcer ] summer is here. and so too is the summer event. now get an incredible offer on the powerful c250 sport sedan. but hurry before this opportunity...disappears. the mercedes-benz summer event ends july 31st.
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whether you like the goal of this policy or you hate the goal of this policy, the issue here is this was just a really, really stupid way to try to do it. here's what it looked like. see if you can identify the stupidity here. the federal government wanted to give loans to students to help them pay to go to college. that's the big bag of money here. we gave out that money for the students by giving the money to the banks. the government said to the banks, you loan money to students and we promise that you will get the money back. even if the students don't pay you back, we will cover it. that is guaranteed. so the banks, not the government, loaned out the money to the students, but there was no risk to the banks. so the government put up the money for your loan, and when you as a student paid it back, the bank got to keep the interest you paid them unless you defaulted and didn't pay, in
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which case the bank got paid anyway, government pays them for that, too. it was the best scam ever. that makes me want to be a bank. if corporations are people, that's the corporation i want to be. the bank gets paid no matter what for providing nothing. the government is providing a loan. the bank is just being given a guaranteed profit at no risk to pretend like it's their loan when it's not. it's not their money, not their risk, they just get paid to be there for no reason. what a freaking scam. we wasted tens of billions of dollars every decade doing it this way for a long time. shoveling taxpayer money to the banks for doing nothing. that's how we did it for decades. until we stopped doing that. we stopped doing that in 2010. president obama changed the law in 2010. he got rid of this inane system where the banks were a pointless middle man, saving the taxpayers $60 billion over a decade. the majority of the money saved
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they put into direct aid to students for pay for college, just pell grants, no middleman. it's better for everybody, better for taxpayers, better for students, better for everybody but the banks. want to know what the mitt romney proposal is on college cost? they would like to bring back the old system. the boston globe dit a long piece on the proposal talking to education experts about it. even the right wing education experts they could find to talk to about it said it was ridiculous. literally, that is a quote from one education expert who said he's a republican voter who is likely to vote for mr. romney for other reasons. but quote, on this issue, romney is just ridiculous. his campaign staff doesn't have any new ideas so they said let's just go back to what we were doing before the obama administration came into place. quoting the same expert, what's in it for students or taxpayers? nothing. another conservative education expert at the cado institute said the plan would offer no help to students, but quote, obviously, it would have an
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effect for banks and lenders who would be happy to go back to that. it was a great gig for them. if big national elections in america were fought on the basis of who was looking out for the middle class, who was looking out for the american dream of getting ahead by working hard, the american dream that you can get a college education if you are smart enough and you work hard enough. if big national elections in america turned on issues like that, this dumb student loan issue would be issue a. it's not. at least it's not yet, but james carville, the political strategist who got bill clinton elected president, has a plan, and these figure prominently in the plan. james carville joins us for the interview right here next. the postal service is critical to our economy, delivering mail, medicine and packages. yet the house is considering a bill to close thousands of offices, slash service and layoff over 100,000 workers. the postal service is recording financial losses, but not for reasons you might think.
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the problem ? a burden no other agency or company bears. a 2006 law that drains $5 billion a year from post office revenue while the postal service is forced to overpay billions more into federal accounts. house bill 2309 is not the answer. car insurance companies say they'll save you by switching, you'd have like, a ton of dollars. but how are they saving you those dollars? a lot of companies might answer "um" or, "no comment." then there's esurance.
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my best advice is find a great institution of higher learning. find one that has the right price, shop around. we have always encouraged young people, take a shot, go for it. take a risk. get the education. borrow money if you have to from your parents. start a business. >> borrow money from your parents. perhaps one of them runs an automobile company. his advice on paying for a college education in this country. shop around. mom and dad will set you up. why haven't you just asked them already?
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what's your problem. james carville has a book trying to make this election about pocketbook issues like affording college, like all of the stuff that is central to the existence and disappearance of the middle class in this country. the book is called "it's the middle class stupid" and mr. james carville joins us for the interview. thank you for being here. >> i'm glad to be here, rachel. >> you were saying when we were playing the clip that issues like the student loan thing resonate with people more than people think they do. you think the beltway doesn't think issues like that resonate? >> i don't think they do. they understand that romney would be letting the banks make more money. secondly, when you talk about the middle class and how do you regrow the middle class and bring it back, education is at the forefront. they understand that. i grew up, that was the ticket to prosperity. if you got an education, you knew it was going to pay for itself. that was the best investment you
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could make. now, not so sure. we find out the kids have more dent than the education is worth and we have to change that, and this kind of thing, i think this is a good issue. a good political issue. i think it will resonate with people and i think they'll understand it. i really do. >> one of the things you write about in the new book is this idea that democrats have to take themselves -- take the issue of programs like social security and medicare very, very seriously. they need to be seen as uncompromising defenders of the programs that the middle class defend depends on. how did we end up, democrats willing to question those programs. some democrats are willing to trade away security on those programs? >> because we make -- i think we make a fundamental error.
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the biggest problem we have in the country is the deficit. you say, let's cut entitlements because the deficit is the biggest problem. if you say the biggest problem is that the middle class is shrinking, it would clearly shrink if the deficit got too high, but that would lead you to a conclusion, let's cut health care costs. that's the easiest way to cut the deficit, but no one -- the washington consensus is we have to cut entitlements. the real truth of the matter is that if you cut health care costs, the cost of the entitlements will go down with that. you have people that are -- when people do focus groups and political people all come back and say the same thing, people are breaking down crying. they're breaking down crying, people say the same thing, i'm one disease away from the end. they're taking children back in their house, they're changing jobs. people are starting lawn mower services when they're 55 years old, and the washington consensus is, aha, this person can't have medicare, or the washington consensus is, cut their social security.
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look, if you're a cable tv contributor, i don't care, i'm 67 1/2, i'm happy to work another year. if i'm a shrimper or a hotel maid, i might have another idea about going deeper into it. >> on that issue, health care costs coming down would have this huge impact on the deficit. in the beltway right now, all they ever talk about is the deficit. that's true for a long time. so is -- part of the reason democrats don't get credit for having passed health care reform, they haven't sold it to the beltway chattering class as antideficit policy making? >> the deficit is an important issue. why would anybody care about the deficit as a republican? go look for the deficit. it's no reason we need to concede that as i recall the last time the budge was in surplus was under a democratic president. if you start from the vantage point up, how do we rebuild the middle class and went to social security and said we're going to do something with social security, might cut a benefit here or there, might do other things, but this is to save social security. the middle class would say, okay, i understand that. but if you go to them as the
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elites in washington want to do and say we started some wars we shouldn't have started, we got out of hand with some tax cuts, we had to bail out banks, so you be a good americans and we're going to cut the social security you paid into so we can pay for the garbage we did, and people say we don't want to do that. then the conclusion is they're selfish, no, they're just not stupid. they'll pay for social security if it's to strengthen social security for their retirement. they won't pay for mistakes washington made in the past. > the biggest problem we have in our country is the deficit. so if you look at that, and you say, let's cut entitlements. because that's the biggest problem. if you say the biggest problem we have in the country is the middle class is shrinking, it would clearly shrink if the deficit got too high, that would lead you to the conclusion, let's cut health care costs. if you cut health care costs, that's the easiest way to cut the deficit. but the washington consensus is,
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>> the elderly poverty rate in the united states in 1965 was 30%. we did -- improved social security, today it's about 9.5, even in the middle of a recession. that is the act of a just and moral nation. that is a moral act. god in heaven, the god of the catholic church that i'm in, would be very proud and very happy about that. very, very -- that -- about two-thirds the number of old people in this country go to bed cold or hungry has been reduced, is really a staggering accomplishment in the united states. we should be very proud of that. >> and i think democrats' political response to that now should be, like nancy pelosi said about medicare, we do have a plan on social security. it's called social security. >> yeah! >> we stand for it and we'll defend it and we're not going to let anybody -- >> but what i'm saying is, if you said you were going to do something to strengthen social security, people would say, well, okay, that makes sense. what they're not willing to do is cut social security to reduce
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the other part of the deficit. >> yeah, yeah. in terms of this -- in terms of the overall strategy for the election in november, if the election is about the disappearance of the middle class and the challenges of the middle class, what does that mean the specific issues are that these candidates will be running ads on and competing on right down to the wire in november? >> well, two things that come to mind are rising health care costs and education, or what the middle class says are the two things that matter most to them, that they see. then, how do we become more competitive? they're completely into that. they're not -- it's not like that -- but what they want is, they want somebody to come up with a plan to say, this is going to help rebuild the middle class. they were kind of against the stimulus, because they thought it was just throwing money at the problem. if you would have done many of the same things and said, this is a program to help rebuild the middle class. we need to build infrastructure in this country, to be more constructive -- they would
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support that instantly. what they're looking for is something -- >> but don't talk about it in terms of its macro goals for the economy. just talk about the direct -- >> talk about the long-term benefit to the middle class. and then they will go along with that. but it's just the way they think. but they know how much trouble they're in. they know what they're having to do, and they want somebody to show them that there's a way out. and the person that does that is going to be rewarded. >> yeah. democratic strategist, james carville, the leading strategist in bill clinton's presidential campaign, co-author of the new book, "it's the middle class, stupid!" i'm not taking it personally. thank you so much. an organized campaign is underway to take over the republican party right now and nobody wants to talk about it except me. that's next. hi, i'm phil mickelson. i've been fortunate to win on golf's biggest stages. but when joint pain and stiffness from psoriatic arthritis hit,
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even the smallest things became difficult. i finally understood what serious joint pain is like. i talked to my rheumatologist and he prescribed enbrel. enbrel can help relieve pain, stiffness, and stop joint damage. because enbrel, etanercept, suppresses your immune system, it may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma, other cancers, and nervous system and blood disorders have occurred. before starting enbrel, your doctor should test you for tuberculosis and discuss whether you've been to a region where certain fungal infections are common. don't start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. tell your doctor if you're prone to infections, have cuts or sores, have had hepatitis b, have been treated for heart failure, or if, while on enbrel, you experience persistent fever, bruising, bleeding, or paleness. [ phil ] get back to the things that matter most. ask your rheumatologist if enbrel is right for you. [ doctor ] enbrel, the number one biolog medicine prescribed by rheumatologists. ttd#: 1-800-345-2550 let's talk about market volatility.
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here on this show that frankly does not get much attention anywhere else is the extent to which the supporters of one of the republican presidential candidates this year are not giving up on him, even though mitt romney seemingly has the nomination in the bag. supporters of ron paul are taking over the republican party at the state and local level. ron paul folks are now becoming republican party state chairman in places like iowa and alaska. they've taken over in places like clark county, nevada, where las vegas is, which is awkward if you're mitt romney and you're counting on any help from the republican party to win in a place like nevada. in addition to taking over the party whatever they can, ron paul folks are still fighting to win the majority of delegates in as many states as they can. if they do that again in nebraska this saturday, according to the republican party's own rules, dr. paul will be eligible to be nominated for
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president at the party's official convention in tampa this fall, which means that at that convention, mitt romney's nomination will be contested. and there will have to be dueling speeches by him and ron paul, and there will be a contested floor vote. and it will not go at all the way these coronations are supposed to go. i realize that this is not happening in washington, d.c. and it is something the republican party big wigs would like to keep as quiet as possible. but the question of whether or not the ron paul folks are going to take over the nebraska republican delegation this weekend turns out to be quite a few a big deal. and the ron paul folks know that. and nebraska republicans know that. very quietly last week, the nebraska republican party confirmed plans that they plan to increase security for their convention this weekend. they said it was in the interest of holding an orderly convention, a private security firm being brought in by the state republican party to police their convention when it is facing the threat that supporters of someone other than mitt romney will try to win election there. the increased security plan was announced last week. we confirmed it with the party last week, and then today they changed their minds. the state republican chairman
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now says the party has reconsidered and withdrawn its plan to hire additional security officers. they say they're hoping for a convention that will be conducted the nebraska way. by which they mean, with civility. republicans have had a really hard time adjusting this year to the idea that there's ongoing, committed dissent within their ranks. and the media have helped by ignoring that dissent, by pretending it's not happening. it's happening. the fact that these don't look like stereotypical republicans does not mean that they are not republicans. they are. and they are taking over at the state and local level, while everybody else studiously looks the other way. seriously. what exactly is the republican plan to try to win nevada, which they've been trying to convince us is a swing state, when this is the republican party in the part of nevada that has three quarters of the state's population? republicans have a real problem here. it is a big deal. and that there is no parallel for on the democratic side. trying to ignore that fact will not make it go away. private security guards are not these dissenting republicans that everybody is trying to do may do something this saturday that turns the national republican convention this summer on its ear.
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i realize it is not happening in washington and therefore the beltway will not pay attention. i realize that the republicans who are in charge of the republican party don't want to talk about this, so the fox newses of the world will never cover it. but it is happening. and if we believe that party politics mean anything in this country, the fact that one of these parties is being taken mitt romney has gone as far as he can as a republican, so today he decided to run as a new democrat, a clinton democrat, which means he now has to lie about bill clinton. >> no matter who you are, no matter that you look like, no
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matter where you come from, america is a place where you can make it if you try. >> this old-style liberalism has got to end and we will end it in november. >> a blockbuster summer on the presidential campaign trail. >> president obama and mitt romney hit two battleground states. >> president obama is in iowa right now. >> fourth visit to iowa just this year. >> where he is expected to hammer home the issue of tax fairness. >> our goal is to put people back to work, but it's also to build an economy where that work pays off. >> governor romney is suggesting this amounts to class warfare. >> the sort of thing only an extreme liberal could come up. >> mitt romney wants to continue jobs for companies that ship jobs overseas. >> if there's an outsourcing in chief, it's the president of the united states. >> not the commander in chief, but the outsourcer in chief. >> president obamaing the outsourcing in chief. >> saying it doesn't make it true. >> they're taking the argument
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