welcome to the alone a show where you'll get the real headline and one of the mercy i'm christine for south filling in for a loan and we are coming live out of washington d.c. tonight we'll take a look at the latest jobs numbers unemployment finally drops below nine percent as more than three hundred thousand people leave the labor pool and should the occupy wall street movement be occupying the ballot box we'll speak to christine oversell it bassist and co-founder of the band nirvana and the chair of fair vote who argues just that then we'll ask once again which religious group in the u.s.

place is god above country of all that and more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right now with the rise of newt gingrich and fall of herman cain the mainstream media is in a frenzy after all what more could they ask for a real life sex scandal and a new candidate to obsess over it's practically christmas come early for them. it seems like today could be judgment day for herman cain could this be herman cain's last day on the campaign trail tonight he had to talk to his wife about accusations that he had a thirteen year long affair is the future of cain's candidacy riding on this confrontation conversation with his wife and family mitt romney taking off the gloves folks showing some teeth in his battle with newt gingrich have to win the

election to win the election you got to earn it public and presidential contender new cambridge says he's going to be the republican presidential nominee and if it wasn't a smart thing for newt gingrich to say. while the new gingrich mitt romney and herman cain tit for tat political does drama does your dominated the mainstream media today totally miss the story that will affect millions of people a story with far reaching consequences on the safety security and rights of millions of americans yesterday the board members of the bay area rapid transit bart with the help of the f.c.c. voted unanimously to give themselves the power to turn off cell phone service in their transit stations whenever they see fit the policy limits temporary limit temporary shutdowns for the quote most extraordinary circumstances and i think extraordinary can be interpreted in any way you want they say that anything that poses a danger to public safety destruction of our property or a quote substantial disruption of service now this vote came after bart already did

this before back on august eleventh you may remember in response to a planned protest on bart organized by people angry and wanting to speak out against the fatal shooting of an unarmed man oscar grant a transit police officer your highness meza really the protests never materialized in part because the switch was flipped and cell phone service was blocked just like that and i seem to recall that happened somewhere else egypt i think so let us know what president obama said when when president then president hosni mubarak blocked the internet and cell service for the egyptian people in the name of public safety . i also call upon the egyptian government to reverse the actions that they've taken to interfere with access to the internet the cell phone service and to social networks that do so much to connect people in the twenty first century the same time so it's not ok for social media and cell service to be blocked in egypt but it is ok here and i'm just asking now i told you that voted the bart board of voted

unanimously to officially give themselves this authority after they already did it once well i should also tell you two people were not present for that vote art directors joel keller and lynette sweet who were briefly out of the room maybe it's just a coincidence but we're not spoke out pretty loudly against a board when this happened back in august everyone of the bar board members is a let to do this office you take an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the united states while the constitution gives you the right to free speech so we don't get to pick and choose which of limits we're going to protect and then as we continue to commute. by coincidence she was out of the room when they decided to vote or maybe it had something to do with the fact they took the vote so quickly because only one person showed up to speak out against it most likely people outraged the first time around didn't even know the vote would happen because no

one in the media covered it now the first time around the mainstream media actually did pay attention. bay area rapid transit officials decided to block wireless service in several sherm francisco stations thursday night the agency wanted to stop a planned protest over a fatal transit police shooting in july a good thing everyone seemed to notice including us was a sudden lack of so-called service face again and now who is specially when some realized it was not a random out of the prohibition on all cell phones seems a wild overreaction and likely to be struck down as a violation of the first amendment and the california constitution peaceful protest as everyone is hoping and then why even need to shut off cell service if that is the way you go. so what about a follow up and staying on top of a story that actually affects millions of people this was a unilateral decision by a government agency and now it's in writing and endorsed by the f.c.c. it can happen again and again and yet the mainstream media was too busy wrestling

this week boxing match between herman cain and newt gingrich to pay attention. dismal disappointing depressing anemic these are words we actually didn't hear with the release of the numbers that came out today by the u.s. labor department according to these figures the unemployment rate went down from nine percent to eight point six percent the lowest level in two and a half years with private sector hiring increasing by hundred forty thousand jobs and still the public sector meaning government jobs at a local state and federal level actually did go down by about twenty thousand jobs but these numbers for the most part are pretty uplifting for a lot of people especially that unemployment rate percentage drop kind of major these days right and there is another part of the story that in some ways is most significant and that is that three hundred fifteen thousand people dropped out of

the labor force altogether just gave a. up after what has probably been for many of them years of trying and failing at finding a job now this means that right now just sixty four percent of americans are actively participating in the workforce this is a historic low and there are some figures here that deserve looking more deeply into so joining me now from our studio in new york is kelly evans the head of the tape columnist at the wall street journal hey there kelly you know if you turn on the t.v. this seems like it's being greeted as wonderful news how are the markets responding i don't know i mean we are on t.v. and i think people are savvier now in reporting about these job reports and they have been in the past and they realize that it's not all about the headline numbers but you're right you know when you when you start to think about what's going to lead nightly news it's probably going to be that the unemployment rate dropped and historically when the unemployment rate drops consumer confidence tends to rise in fact this is something that usually used to happen right when recessions rending

and recoveries were beginning and you know lately it's taking longer it's taking two years now for this to happen what economists with a hopeful but will say is that maybe we're at that point where we're starting to see the labor market turn around where you start to see confidence pick up as we have in some surveys lately and that sort of sets you up well for continued job gains and a recovery but i been many others and yourself included a lot of people just sort of maintain this level of caution when it comes to kind of grading these with with open arms i think caution is a good word to say especially when you really dissect some of these numbers more than three hundred thousand people just leaving the workforce sort of giving up maybe a lot of these people will come back in the unemployment rate will fluctuate again what do you think kelly is the real unemployment rate here. well one thing that people like to look at when they talk about the real unemployment rate is that use six gauge that's really the broadest read of both people who are unemployed people who are working part time for economic reasons meaning they couldn't find full time work people who are discouraged maybe about to drop out of the work force that rate

has been at a peak of almost twenty percent during the recession and it's really come down it fell below sixteen percent two in the fifteen's in this report so it's still too high but the point is it's moving in the right direction you know it's hard to read too much into any one month fluctuation in this survey anytime you see a job as large as you did in employment rate you don't really want to take it at face value and probably about half of that was for people leaving the labor force but that isn't to say we're necessarily going to jump back above nine percent certainly not next month we will probably though drift up and down and kind of bounce around just like we did for much of the year prior to actually getting this report but this mass exodus from the labor force i mean is this is sustainable way to keep the unemployment rate down it is it's not the way we necessarily want though it's important to understand that people aren't just leaving the labor force because they're discouraged they're also leaving labor force because they're getting older so you know it's really hard to tell which of those is the overriding

factor here but one thing that people have sort of said is coming is to look at labor force participation dropping because of demographic reasons just simply because you know when you turn from being in the under fifty five to over fifty five cohort your typical employment participation ratio goes from like eighty percent to forty percent so drop significantly so aging does have a lot to do it this that said we do know that older workers are actually coming into labor force looking for work in some cases we also know people are leaving not just because they're getting older but because they simply don't see the job prospects and that's not so encouraging and let's talk about some other stuff that came out in this report on wages actually went down i'm wondering i mean a lot of people who are working are earning less what do you think this says about the economic forecast. you know i'm going to raise that's actually a critical part of this morning's report there were two things that didn't go in the in the right direction if you really want to get excited about the outlook it was average hourly earnings which fell for the second time in four months that are now only up about one point eight percent year on year and any time they're below

that two percent threshold you know economists get kind of worried the other end of it was the length of the workweek which may not sound like a big swing factor but a one tenth that is a six minute increase or decrease in the work week one direction or the other could have the effect in terms of income of adding or eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the economy so if you were to really factor that in the cline and average hourly earnings you can tell that employment report that's much closer to being neutral if not slightly negative than one that's you know mitigated relief that's so interesting six minutes could have such a significant change another factor we have to of course bring up i mean we can get the most shiny happy economic news from any of these reports but we do have to talk about europe there are people predicting that it could be a matter of days before the eurozone fails i just want to read a quote this was from a senior official with the obama administration who said the thing that matters most in determining the health of the u.s. economy and job creation is what happens in europe so of course i'm sure the president was thrilled to get these numbers but probably not too comfortable right

now given what's going on there. yes some of the rhetoric i see from wall street strategist otherwise say the euro has ten days left you know this is the real point at which we figure out of the euro is going to survive are going to fail you know some of the rhetoric is overdone but i also think a lot of european politicians including on bloomberg will want us to think that they're moving closer towards solving this crisis and in fact there are a lot of investors who are much more skeptical about whether they're actually making any progress unfortunately the only real viable outcome here if you want to keep the euro in its current form is a form of monetization by the european central bank that effectively is going to mean inflation in the core like germany because you can't really have deflation in the peripheral countries that are heavily saturated with dead obviously if they go into recession if they try to push through a lot of austerity measures it's going to make their situations worse and not better so there are no good solutions here the only real viable one being aggressive movements by the e.c.b. the european central bank so that's the body to keep an eye on going into next week yes there's another policy summit yes it obviously at the end of the day people

have to come together on what they want the euro zone to continue in its current form or not but ultimately it's mario draghi at the european central bank who's really you know pulling the levers here let's go back to the markets role in all of this i know we just saw a few days ago a bunch of the banks from a number of countries europe britain japan and canada and of course the united states. kind of joined together joined forces just to make sure that they'd have the ability to get money when they needed it when this happened really interesting when you watch the markets they. loved it it was great news what do you think the market's role is in all of this. well what's interesting is to take a look at what we learned on wednesday we learned that central banks are willing to sort of do what it took to offer liquidity as much as they could to stem this crisis we also learned republicans might be on board with extending the payroll tax cut we learned that that a.d.p. jobs report showed private sector hiring so there were a lot of things on wednesday that contributed to the market rallying what's going to be key here because people like to talk about how december usually get a bit of

a santa claus rally and you know the when the stock market's rising it's generally because people see a brighter outcome ahead so the key is whether we can hold these gains and there has been extremely low volume lately there isn't really a lot of conviction i think when i start getting the twenty twelve outlook notes and they basically say you know the situation is going to be great or dire you know it's going to be a year of amazing recovery or terrible declines in growth you know it's sort of a market fluctuating between these alternative outcomes and unfortunately you know europe through the financial system is really really could be the swing factor here and you know i think it's too soon to really feel very encouraged that the leaders are going to prevent this crisis from deepening all right wall street journal columnist kelly evans in our new york studio very interesting times that we are in right now for sure. thanks for having me. well just ahead on tonight celebrating all the latest on a piece of legislation that could put the military target detaining terrorism suspects in the united states and police in boston raiding occupying him and taking

a kitchen sink over you all the latest on the over the u.s. the victims and discussed future of the movement with nirvana basis priscilla south america. into that only military mechanisms to do the work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm trying hard luck is

a big picture. mr . do you still believe the refugees.

who protested nobody seems to know. that never a pepper sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. politicians on capitol hill have been working hard on a six hundred sixty two billion dollar defense bill and more importantly one provision written within this legislation as we mentioned last week the indefinite detention language in the bill is more than alarming it would mandate that all accused terrorists be indefinitely imprisoned by the military rather than the civilian court system and allow for indefinite detention for non americans and possibly u.s. citizens who are suspected in engaging in terrorist activity that last bit to be dealt with in the courts it was something that the president has threatened to veto from the beginning and leon panetta and the directors of the cia and f.b.i.

are also strongly opposed to opposed to the provision they believe that there needs to be flexibility on terrorism cases and each situation needs to be dealt with in a manner that the white house sees that rather than making a broad sweeping rules that could unjustly hold individuals without trial now obviously the idea of detaining u.s. citizens without trial is something that many including rand paul described as not american the draft criticism by those in the law enforcement community who claim a new military detention policy could ultimately undermine the efforts that the f.b.i. and local law enforcement are doing to stop terrorism but despite those arguments several republicans like john mccain and lindsey graham are pushing hard for this bill stating that it would simply cement a counterterrorism system that's already in place thanks to court decisions and executive orders however those republicans who favor the present provision were joined by sixteen democratic legislators as well proving that this is one of the few recent issues doesn't seem to fall on party lines but efforts were made by two

lawmakers to change the indefinite detention draft earlier this week senator dianne feinstein attempted to change the wording to prevent indefinite detention of americans without trial however that was voted down forty five to fifty five and senator mark udall tried to remove the provision altogether arguing that more research needs. to be done on the issue too was voted down thirty seven to sixty one last night the senate decided to vote on the defense bill as it is with the indefinite detention provision and it passed with an overwhelming vote of ninety three to seven so now the current wording of the defense bill has unfortunately been finalized by the senate and will be up to the executive branch and team obama to stop this ridiculous legislation from becoming law. well let's talk about the occupy wall street movement and some new developments that have gone down in the last couple days you know it seems like police are really trying to stop this movement to take everything away from it well everything but the kitchen sink of course well it turns out police in boston actually took the kitchen sink seriously

texas out. of the love and tonight show the surely a rival. of all things causing a new clash between police of r.q. part of boston protesters. as we already know encampments in dozens of cities have been dismantled by police encampments that in many ways come to embody the occupy movement itself we told you yesterday about the los angeles occupiers whose five hundred or so tents were taken down or destroyed by police there and of the nearly three hundred people who are were arrested up until just a few hours ago more than half of them were behind bars because well they weren't afford they weren't able to afford the five hundred dollars bail that was set for them i think is five thousand dollars bail actually so with this forced change in the occupiers strategy where does the movement go from here well joining me in the studio in los angeles is krist novoselic bassist and co-founder of the

groundbreaking band nirvana also chair of fair vote center for voting and democracy hey there chris i know that the occupy movement is one that is near and dear to your heart you've spoken out a lot about it you've written about it why is this something that is resonating with you. well to tell the truth i'm don't consider myself an occupy wall street person i'm an american think that things are out of whack in the united states too much special interest influence in government feeling like we're locked out of the democratic process here and. the financial situation could be in better shape so a lot of the message of occupy wall street is resonating with me you and quite a lot of other people in this country for sure and i know you recently wrote something about it in terms of the evolution of this movement and you wrote you know if o'dell the u.s. is forced to move out it why it might as well move by this i mean the time has come to engage in electoral politics you say i guess i really want to know kind of what

you mean by that expand on that well i was a skeptic of occupy wall street in the beginning but i was happily proven wrong and so occupy wall street is established itself as a movement in the united states and it's a brand name so i put that in context of occupy groups getting cleared out of encampments in seattle portland and other cities and so where does it go from here ok and so i'm chairman of fair vote the center for voting and democracy and we work for election reform so so the context is how those like occupiers in washington state how do they use the electoral system to get their message out to promote their needs and values. and i know one of your ideas is you wanted to actually have them get either get candidates on the ballot or at least to kind of question the candidates that are running so far especially for the twenty twelve elections or whatever i'm not inventing the wheel here it's basically it's basically lector all

politics is what it is or the notion of association where people with shared needs and values they come together in a group and you put your your platform together like this is what we're about this is what our message is to society and to voters ok that's our platform that's our manifesto and the second stage is to nominate candidates for office people who will stand in front of voters ok so in washington state we have runoff elections we have a majority voting system ok so the first round is in august so you can have on the ballot like jane smith prefers hash mark us party or you can have john doe or whoever. prefer occupy wall street party and so the state of washington mails voters ballots we have mail in voters or mail in ballots so it's like every voter in the state is going to get these ballots they can say occupy

wall street on them and not only that the state publishes a voter's guide where you get like so many words next to your photograph as a candidate explain what your policy proposals are for free in the hands of every voter i think it's really interesting i mean this is kind of a little bit of an off base comparison but it wasn't valid long ago just a few decades ago that the republican party sort of you know really made sure to associate candidates and get their views first and foremost not on how they're going to help the economy not how they're going to help citizens of america but what their views are on things like gun control and abortion i think in some ways this could be the answer to even if it's not getting occupy wall street candidates on the ballot which i mean hopefully that is one solution but also asking candidates that do make it past the primaries where they stand on certain issues where do you stand on issues like holding bankers accountable things like that i mean is that sort am i on the right track there. absolutely and so that's how like the top two runoff system works and so you run your candidate in the primary

election and they might make it into the top two so they're going to square off against the other top to go together but if they don't get to the top two then you put all that energy behind a candidate and i can imagine the occupy wall streeters are going to be involved in the election this year with the president of the united states going to be on the ballot the united states house of representatives what about crist i mean a lot of people i've spent a lot of time covering the occupy movement and a lot of the people that i've spoke to say they want to that they like that idea but it's very difficult for them to imagine such a thing because they really feel like the political system as it is now is just too corrupt and the idea of taking part in it doesn't really resonate well with them. well absolutely it's a lot of hard work so if you're like camping and there's some tarp in a park somewhere maybe you can put energy knocking on doors for a candidate and that's a lot of work are passing out literature and then again in the united states

unfortunately there's a lot of ballot access barriers petition requirements are poor out of the elections a single member district and that's what we're working with fair we promote proportional representation more people most people don't know that we can have proportional representation in the united states if there's an american version. of proportional voting and i know chris you and others have spoken out about and were just speaking about it now in terms of larger broader changes to the electoral system to the democratic system itself but let's take a sort of a specific example of that i know you've been following the race pretty closely in oregon a special election there at the end of january and there's a candidate steve reynolds who has been nominated by the progressive party this is a veteran seems like a pretty smart guy but he's not running as a democrat or republican he's a progressive and he's been held out of forums public forums that have been held on talk a little bit about that the two party system this example overall and sort of how

that relates to the u.s. political system on a broader scale. steven reynolds is running as the nominee for the oregon progressive party if you look at the oregon progressive party's platform on their website it's virtually a mirror of what the demands are for act occupy wall street there's this extraordinary opportunity there's going to be an election for congress for the united states house of representatives in january and there's a candidate for the progressive party who's ballot qualified so again instead of camping out in some park go knock on doors for stephen reynolds give stephen reynolds five bucks give him ten dollars so he was excluded from these debates because these media companies aren't taking him seriously but more importantly they don't expect him to spend a dime on media advertising i mean how much is a thirty second commercial during the five o'clock local news it's a lot of money and that's where all that special interest money goes it goes

through the campaigns and they get spent on media ok occupy wall street tea party. people coming together were shared needs and values and expressing themselves in the form of democracy i mean how many parks you need to get chased out of how many kitchen scenes you know who brought a kitchen sink to a demonstration i mean come on they wanted playing they wanted their easy area clean. it sounds like. didn't nixon have plumbers in the whole watergate if they want to have a sink ok that's cool but the obvious that you get hung up on these local ordinances and some kind of like lord loitering ordinance in a park whatever i thought occupy wall street was about banking rules i thought it was about inclusive democracy about the influence of special interests ok that's when you gauge the electoral system and that's what we're trying to do with a fair vote is to open things up is have a clue so of real choices on the ballot multimember districts with preferential

bell the cumulative voting there is a way there is there is american way to do proportional voting rights. certainly do appreciate these ideas kristen oversell its former basis for the awesome amazing band ivana co-founder of the band. my generation man i like it but you're doing a lot right now to appreciate your views on our show this evening thanks christine . just ahead tonight last week we told you how malls were tracking your every move how banks are looking for a way to gain access to all your personal information details straight ahead and despite all the talk of dangerous muslims living in the united states turns out to probably be more wary of a different religious but it all out with david sirota from the time back. into the room there were three mechanisms to do the work to bring justice or accountability.