welcome to the lower show where you get the real headlines with none of the mersey going to live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take a look at the standstill jobs report and serves as that oh so unpleasant reminder that the economy still sucks and of my consul will join us to talk about how big of a role mortgage debt place of holding us back then we'll be joined by two new york activists to become the targets of the n.y.p.d. go to the station in the thirtieth precinct you might see a flyer with two photos on it labeling them as professional agitators and their crime the police performing stop and frisks so we're going to all of that morphy tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take

a look what the mainstream media decided to me. all right so say we had yet another jobs report that yet again wasn't exactly a ray of hope let's just send the president reacting to the new jobs report if the numbers they're calling it a quote step in the right direction we learned this morning that all businesses created eighty four thousand new jobs last month and that overall means that businesses have created four point four million new jobs over the past twenty months well i don't think there's any way you can put lipstick on this pig it this is a nasty looking jobs report that the labor department says the june jobless rate was unchanged at eight point two percent mitt romney wasting no time in giving his thoughts on the latest jobs report see the jobs report this morning and it is another kick in the tamils last it could've been worse it's been a rough year so far we can't be satisfied because our goal was never. to just keep

on working to get back to where we were in two thousand and seven there's a lot of misery in america today and these numbers understate what people are feeling but we've got a group of them that the president's going to have to stand up and take responsibility for neither president obama nor mitt romney has said anything different in the last few months so i'm not sure that this particular jobs report means all that much i mean here. now we'll get into whether don we think this particular jobs report means all that much in our first interview tonight but before we go there do you notice how the conversation immediately breaks down or to have how each political candidate is responding to this report how immediately the plight of average americans the real people behind these numbers represented is completely forgotten and how nobody about their talks about any possible real time solutions i actually have an idea or two and i think a lot of people in the washington d.c. area but probably agree with me on this one if you don't live in this region then

hopefully you have been spared recently from these massive heat wave that we've been living through because believe me it's frickin hot. leads up to six percent of the continental us is in some siege of drought right now really really dangerous be really careful stay indoors watch the little ones check on the elderly check on your neighbors and just keep yourself hydrated today's temperatures are expected to hover around and above one hundred degrees in chicago and st louis indianapolis baltimore and several spots in between people jammed the city's beaches although lake michigan water temperatures are in the need seventy more water could be found her found that in frozen treats we're going to be. used to i go inside. now what happened in the d.c. area specifically last friday was that a storm passed through a director oh it's called i was out of the country with my colleagues my neighbors they've all filled me in that it was some serious winds and serious. and but there

was no armageddon now regardless what it resulted in it was more than three million people left without power that's nothing that hasn't happened before for maybe a day maybe two but there are many people that i've spoken to holy yesterday got their power back now as of yesterday there were still over fifty thousand fifteen thousand d.c. residents who were without it during this time hotels were completely booked they were charging exorbitant prices for those that could actually afford to find somewhere to stay that had air conditioning but this is the nation's capital this is a major metropolitan city and for five seven days in some cases the power companies were failing to fix it and of course the fact they were in the middle of a record heat wave well that's made all the more miserable and as the news report said more dangerous for many people he might be saying well yeah that sucks but it's kind of a local problem local story well yes and no you see what this entire episode has highlighted are the infrastructural problems that face us as

a nation the more dependent we become on our infrastructure our electric grid our every electronic gadget that we just can't imagine functioning without will the more apparent it becomes that an outdated infrastructure is a threat i think that a lot of comelec companies realize that this week when amazon's cloud computing services went down that that can hurt their bottom line too but the other really important point to bring up in all of this is that it shows us exactly where we can invest in shows exactly where we can create jobs infrastructure spending is not a wasteful government project it's a necessity but it needs to be done right now shockingly we actually saw something positive come out of congress and the president signed the transportation bill today which will create some jobs invest some in infrastructure but i say that we need a lot more but there's yet another point that was brought up by labor reporter and frequent guest on the show mike. let's stop and look at pepco utility company here in d.c. see they had to bring in workers from out of town they were scrambling to find

enough resources. but the thing is that if you speak to the electrical workers which mike did they'll tell you that a lot of it has to do with the shift away from unionized labor and towards non-unionized temporary workers now sure makes labor a lot cheaper for the company the executives more able to rake in more cash but now we're the ones that are losing out as our infrastructure becomes more important as we depend more on it as it becomes even more vulnerable thanks of things like more extreme weather well companies are in the meantime hiring thier workers and so the shift towards temporary workers is actually happening all over the country freelance nation some want to call it where workers no longer have job security and meanwhile those at the top as we so often discuss they're doing better than ever if you want to stick to pepco as an example our d.c. our d.c. noted this week the from two thousand and eight to two thousand and ten pepco c.e.o. joe rigby earned eight point eight million dollars go top officers earned more than twenty two million dollars and during that same period pepco reported eight hundred

and eighty two million dollars in profits meanwhile they paid no federal or state income taxes and they received eight hundred and seventeen million dollars in tax refunds but like i said that's just one company over all our government is failing us when it comes to infrastructure spending and they're letting the utility companies get away with cutting costs on employees which said makes the rest of us less prepared for situations like this and yet they get to increase their profits so today's transportation bill was a step but it's not enough and of course there's a whole element of how much more money we're spending on infrastructure in some of our nation building experiments like iraq so this week in particular this example is just so in your face it is just so obvious and yet still when the cable networks are spending every hour all day today talking about the jobs report for the month of june this somehow doesn't pop into anyone's head once again a failure to connect the dots another. three minutes.

well it's another first friday of the month and there is another jobs report and yet more proof that the economy is stuck so just to refresh you on the numbers here official unemployment is still at eight point two percent and only eighty thousand new jobs were added in the month of june if you look at the us six that's the unemployment measurement that takes into account the marginally attached and underemployed well that's risen back up to fourteen point eight percent also we can now look at this in terms of quarters whereas the first quarter of this year saw an average of two hundred twenty six thousand new jobs a month the second quarter was just seventy five thousand so of course most of the talk today centering around how the obama and the romney campaigns are reacting to these numbers we want to get into why they're actually still so bad and how much mortgage debt has to do with it so joining me to discuss this is my consul fellow

at the roosevelt institute mike thanks for joining us tonight and i guess let's just start with the basics of where we get into your mortgage report q which is that well this jobs report sucks that if you look at the second quarter compared to the first quarter it's only going down and so what do you call this we call it proper analysis you see it's like a frog out of water that's heating up and there's just no real action to do anything i mean the job numbers even if they were ordered to go even if they had doubled they were they would still be too low to get a spectacle employment to get the economy really working again we need serious action and we're just not seen it from any quarter just trying to spin these numbers up and down just a little bit when there's actually a real wake up call to the entire establishment. i mean i don't know did you catch my intro to the show there i'm curious as to what you think about my take in terms of just this example right with this record heat wave that we're having with so many people who have been out of power as to infrastructure is at least one of the areas in which we can invest in which we can create jobs right so if you look at

the rate at which the government can borrow money the real interest rates negative which is to say that the capital markets wall street begging the government to take money you know invested in things if you look around all the kind of opportunities businesses have to grow stink because everyone's out of work so the government can stand up and rebuild infrastructure we're not even talking about the twenty first century infrastructure we need like digital divide and high speed wireless we're just talking about things like you know electricity things we thought we accomplished in the twentieth century that are not falling apart on us because we're not investing to keep them up today. it's i want to get into what is the you've been writing about to which is making a very good point that mortgage that is one of those things that could be a serious factor when it comes to holding our economy that tell us more about it sure so the economy is very weak and it's stalled and it stalled years out from or we thought the recession ended so when you're seeing a lot of people making up kind of fairy tales about what's right and what's wrong with the economy you see people on the right talk about job creators and you know the socialist kenyan brock obama here brought about me talking about president

obama talking about you know winning the future in education but what the real problem is probably never dealt with which was the housing bubble in the housing crash and when you look at places that have this most severe housing crash you see that their economies are just devastated and they are dragging down the national employment situation that this is the problem that is still generating all the other problems that we need serious action on a look at some of the statistics that you point to here for example say that an additional twenty five percent of the decline in economic activity could have been caused by foreclosures so you know how do you come to a number like that. well the number of particular you look at some states the laws are very easy to foreclose they're very creditor friendly some states for historical reasons are very protester you know there are a lot of checks and balances that give people a chance to avoid foreclosure and you know controlling for those kinds of losses laws you see just over the border the economic situation is a lot worse you know and you can really there's now been enough here

a coworker people are looking at credit card records or looking at our credit report records places where people have a lot of housing are places where there's just lower consumption people aren't buying things treats there's a higher unemployment and more sluggish wage growth for people with jobs i mean the housing that is still like an albatross on the economy and we're not out of it yet and i think that's you know that's pretty obvious and it's one of those things that seems to be. the issue that nobody really likes to talk about maybe because it is like you said the albatross and the economy right because there it is so complicated there is so much going on and how do you even try to approach you know the foreclosure crisis. well how do you begin to purge i mean there's a lot of ways one is you can just kind of stop the bleeding right you can start to out put foreclosures through bankruptcy or things that look like anger the media you know mandatory mediation we don't think we shouldn't think of foreclosures things that help economies obviously there are things that destroying neighborhoods and prevent real real investment meanwhile if if leverage the problem is a lot of

a lot of things we can do we can hire people so you know they have money to pay their mortgage so they're not foreclosed on the federal reserve can expand stimulus through monetary means saying you know we're going to help balance the relationship between debtors and creditors and crucially we will put a brake on the economy when it starts to speed up everything is still in play on the demand side what we do need to see is that we should be focused on this instead of other stories about the economy that have been played out in the data and that are ultimately distracting us from what really needs to be done i can't help but bring this up out of the timing i guess you could just say works out well which is that we finally saw the thing rational report came out about countrywide and the v.i.p. mortgages that they were handing out and so i mean you know we everybody knew about this but the investigation has finally come out turns out that they want to blame some of the staffers for it say that when the staffers were complaining to the lobbyists about their mortgages and so they decided to hand out even more of these sweet v.i.p. loans to members of congress and their staffers and then hope that it'll drive them buy them some kind of political influence at the end of the day the way they can

this whole thing. i mean that the corruption between the government and the financial industry is like multivariate and wherever you look you just see more things that should astound you even though everyone should be pretty cynical about this at this point the mortgages do not surprise me at all they're pretty pretty endemic and you know crucially it was you have to think of it as a quid pro quo you have to think of it just as a measure of saying you know what we're not causing any trouble everyone likes it's two thousand five hundred six everyone likes finance everyone's going to get rich off their mortgages forever just play along with this game and don't ask too many questions about what we're actually doing in a lot of these neighborhoods and you know you don't necessarily have to make anyone do anything you said to make people not do anything or take issues off the table that's precisely what you saw and it's what you still see right now finance dominating so much campaign contributions yeah when i guess when the deal is sleep than you don't necessarily want to mess with it right mike thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks for having. our guys it's time for our first break of the

evening bell we come back find out what louis is louisiana state legislator did to win tonight tool time award spoiler alert he doesn't like muslims and then we'll speak to two activists called professional agitators by the n.y.p.d. i'll get their take on it after this. there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before the source material is what helps keep journalism honest we thought. we wanted to present. something else.

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our guys it's time for tonight's tool time award and tonight it's going to louisiana state legislator who's demonstrated ignorance and bigotry of biblical proportions he valerie hodges once counted herself among supporters of education reform an initiative pushed by governor bobby jindal and particularly hodges a champion a plan which is now signed into law to grant vouchers allowing kids to attend religious schools on the taxpayer's dime this is pretty controversial right is the

first amendment supposed to create a clear separation between church and state when our christine for example when she was hosting the show last week she had this on as a subject for discussion on happy hour one religious school set to receive a subsidy teaches kids of the lochness monster debunks charles darwin's theory of evolution so if you just keep looking at it the the biology textbook actually says that the loch ness monster is real so could you guys imagine that this is a curriculum that she supports for the school so if you ask me i think of this lady a little bit crazy we're going to have to come back to our tool time tonight give me a few technical problems but first let's move on to our next story. our guys so earlier this week we spoke to you about two occupiers two activists in new york city who suddenly found their faces posted all over flyers in the thirty s thirtieth precinct in new york city so it turns out that what happened is that they

were going around filming police performing stop and frisk searches in new york city and i guess the police didn't like that very much because then they put these posters all over the station in the thirtieth precinct and label them as professional agitators so what exactly did they do that was wrong well here's a little glimpse of the video that they were taking. it off you. know i'm fine thank you. i mean you know. i mean you. you tell me. you're good at writing descriptions and sure it's basically where we had years or seven hundred thousand stops last year. that we had to be a black officer arresting an african-american woman. to. get . the police for

a third of. like i'm going to buy you grabbing on like that that's what i was posting the news will put on the papers no worse than this i let people know. as we documented before for you stop and frisks have been reaching record levels every year and last year something more than six hundred thousand people were actually stopped and frisked by the police but still the question remains what is a professional agitator why do these two people deserve to have their faces posted all over the thirtieth precinct will they join us from our new york studio now i have matthew and christina with me so i want to thank you both for joining me tonight and first i just want to get your take on you know what it feels like like i said to have your faces posted on these these flyers. i think i think that the point was make is to make us feel like criminals i mean your face is hanging up on a poster that. had you change the title and the description underneath someone

would only assume that we had done something wrong so i mean i'm sure that this was meant to intimidate us but i didn't i only feel more motivated to keep doing what i'm doing matthew would you say feel the same way. i mean it is intimidating it is scary on the trip down to the studio today were on the train were looking you have to be extra aware of what's happening now on the other hand for months we suspected that something was wrong and that we were being targeted and then father said it was a silent march you can stop and frisk i think about fifty thousand people showed up and steven sr was assaulted at the end of that and we went home not really understanding why and i think now we have a greater understanding as to why that event went down the way to our faces were up and police were were in fact organisms and correction i didn't go home after that i actually was arrested and charged with assault myself. well that's right christine i know that you've been you know you been arrested also for civil disobedience

right you called the judge a white racist pig in the courtroom you know these things might seem like an unsavory thing but do you feel like you're somebody who is a criminal who deserves to have their face plastered inside of a precinct. i'm absolutely not a criminal actually i'm a victim i'm a victim of crime i'm a victor of a victim of larger crimes that are going on in society and now i'm a victim of crimes that are being committed individually by specific officers. i think that the things that i have been doing may seem strange to other people or maybe they can't understand why but i'm speaking out against injustice and it seems that when you do that they then put your face on a flyer and and i think that it only makes us wonder who else is faces do they have up like this that didn't happen to walk into a community council meeting and discover it. matthew can you tell me why it is that you guys have been filming the police performing these stop and frisks and then

deciding to put them on line. you know we're filming stop and frisks among other just regular police activities to do is that they're doing preemptive policing in the city so they're stopping people for thought crimes for suspicion for any reason for you if you're wearing a hat with a flat brim that's enough of an excuse to stop you so we've been we've been filming just just socially just social responsibility as a matter of every day like when we see officers on the street we film and. really we're looking at you know n.b.c. shows the same for stop and frisks for years now and a.b.c. this shows the same three stop and frisks and there's two thousand of these a day and nobody's going out and filming them so. this is now the citizens obligation to pick up where the american media has has not seen fit to get on the street and really do their job you see i mean i mean there there are people

stealing billions of dollars. in this country right now there are people who are committing mass genocide in this country and outside of this country and those people are cold businessmen and then when i get sent to rikers island for freedom of speach. when i get sent to central bookings for simply standing somewhere and holding a sign and saying what you're doing is wrong i'm there with people who jump to turnstile i'm there with someone who had a joint in their ashtray in their home i'm there with with a woman who was abused by her husband and now he lies on her and now she ends up in central booking i mean first for simple minor things these people aren't criminals we should be looking at why these crimes are taking place and be looking at the people on top and saying these are the criminals and that's what's causing this right i mean the broken windows theory does not work. see there's both been you know part of the occupy movement too for

a long time and so i'm just curious as to where you think that that stands right now you know we'll get back to what's going on but that's part of the occupy movement is talking about the unfairness in our society right that people are getting away with white collar crime that there is this elite immunity in the country and yet at the same time we have seen the numbers become smaller partly that's because it's not as physical outdoor occupation anymore but then at the same time you know they just had this national gathering of occupy in philadelphia and some people said that that was kind of lackluster so you know what do you think is really happening with the movement right now. what i'm learning from the movement to continue to learn from the movement is that your neighbors your community is paramount and so for instance you know captain stevenson is thirty eight precinct if you go to a community board meeting there what you hear is lock your windows lock your doors be suspicious of everybody be very alert these kids these people occupiers taught me a totally different mindset i had

a lot of that in my head just growing up in this country you know this kind of look out for number one deal and occupy has taught me that the only thing that's ever going to keep any of us safe the only chance we have is if we really get to know community and do things in community and think communally. so the occupy we've been part of the reason i think out on the flyer is because of the occupy movement but on the other hand the occupy movement is really teaching you how to deal with this with compassion is there's no hatred in me it's we've got now we've got an opportunity to really get to know our neighbors and to try and ensure our safety that way and it's and it's hard to do that when you feel like you're being watched constantly and you don't know. who's an undercover agent and who is your neighbor and who's watching you and who's not and i think that. when i hear officers from the thirtieth precinct in a meeting telling telling residents this neighborhood is getting better it upsets me because what he's not telling them is how fifteen years ago that same precinct

was under a lot of scrutiny for something called memories rader's when they were kicking in the officers were kicking in people's doors and stealing their drugs and money and robbing people on the streets so so he's making this is the same way that they did with occupy is like turning people against each other making us look crazy that's what they're doing here in our community is that they're trying to make us look like we're bad people when really we're just exposing what they're doing i mean occupy is an idea that will die now we're still talking about it and though you don't see people in the streets every day it doesn't mean that we're not in our homes doing something it doesn't mean that because we're not in a big gathering on the street that we're not all over the city simultaneously doing something that really matters and i just i hope for the safety of everyone that's involved with occupy you know all those that are in positions of authority often don't like it when people turn it around and decide to start watching them and i think that you can see the way that we live the kind of police response that we've

seen with the occupy movement across the country or just the general surveillance state that we have it's growing it is a method of intimidation because if you scare people out of that then you know they'll submit but i got to ask you this we did this on our tool time the other day on the show and we decided to have a little fun and say you know what is a professional agitator anyway if you ask me this could be lobby is to give the mayor bloomberg has he says i can't have you know a big soda anyone or so to you what's it what's a professional agitator. well you know we're talking to a lot of officers your rank and file officers and so on we're talking about history and sociology and anthropology and we're talking about the nexus of sexism and classism and racism i mean i think the reason that they're calling us agitators or referring to what we do is propaganda is maybe they're not they're not getting some of it so there's that but i think it's also a special educator is someone who insists on speaking. in groups in public in our neighborhood if you come together in the streets and you congregate they will write

you a summons and we feel like we have things to discuss as a community problems we're going to need to address and joyous moments we're going to celebrate together to spontaneously and the police simply won't let that happen in our neighborhood. that's that's a real problem that's that's a problem for democracy that's not just a problem for stan and i that's something that this country is going to have to deal with the officers are going to have to let us you can go to any precinct in this city and see the constitution on the wall you won't see that so what they've got is this great sense of fraternity with absolutely no ethics and that's what we're finding now as we're finding i have is that christine i'm sorry i'm i'm sorry to cut you off but we have to hit a break and so i have to wrap it up but i want to thank you both for joining us tonight. and that these late thanks for being here. are guys it's time for another short breather but when we come back we'll revisit tonight's poll finds that met and always a very happy very special and let's just say that our mission won't be accomplished until we do.