Transcripts For MSNBC Up W Chris Hayes 20121117

Vice president of the progressive think tank, new York Democratic congressman and friend of the show jerry mather and msnbc contributor joy reed, managing editor of thegrio. Com. On a Conference Call with donors this week, portions of which were posted online by abc news mitt romney blamed his loss to president obama on what he calls gifts the president had given to core democratic constituencies like students, women, and latinos. What the president the president s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote. Just note that, you know, doesnt actually cost any money but side point. Romneys framing of the president s Campaign Strategy is, of course, offensive but it is also not entirely inaccurate. The president did, indeed, deliver on some of the major policy priorities of those core democratic constituencies. Mandatory Insurance Coverage for birth control, making Student Loans more affordable, and deferring action, as i said on young, undocumented immigrants among other things. Romney calls those gifts, and in many cases a majority of americans would call them good policy. What republicans seem to be picking up on is key components of the president s coalition exerted considerable leverage over the white house during the president ial campaign. Know as we enter the fight over what i and some others are calling the fiscal curve the combination of tax increases and spending cuts set to start on january 1st, the question is will the left retain any of that leverage over the president , or has it disappeared . On tuesday, a group of Union Leaders and progressive organizers met with president obama at the white house. Lee saunders, president of asfcme, the American Federation of state, court and municipality state county and municipal employees said the coalition that reelected president obama would remain intact to pressure lawmakers during the standoff over the fiscal curve. What were going to do is keep our members mobilized and organized in certain communities across the country. Were going to another campaign, we won the election but were going into another campaign now. For his part president obama reiterated on wednesday the election had delivered a clear verdict on the question of whether taxes should be raised on income over 250,000. If there was one thing that everybody understood it was a big difference between myself and mr. Romney it was when it comes to how we reduce our deficit i argued for a polled, responsible approach, and part of that included make sure the wealthiest americans pay a little bit more. I think every voter out there understood that that was an important debate. And the majority of voters agreed with me. President obama met with congressional leaders yesterday to begin the talks and House Speaker john boehner suggested the parties could reach broad agreement on revenue targets and savings from entitlement reforms to avoid the immediate budget cuts. The leaders said they would meet again after thanksgiving. All right, congressman mather, before we get to this political question, because i think the political question is really important. I think some of the stuff we saw in the Election Year really was the product of Election Year dynamics. And in a positive way. Thats why we have elections. Thats exactly right. People say thats politics. Thats also known as democracy. Thats also known as accountability. Theres nothing wrong with it, right . Before we get to the politics of that, and george i want to bring you in on that question, substantively, where do you want, what do you want to see . I mean if youre to say jerry mather, i make you emperor of america for for or emperor of these negotiations and you get to like sign the document and thats what we get, what is the end point you would like to see . The end point i would like to see is something were not going to get given the fact that republicans control the house, but, what i would like to see is much less of an emphasis on the deficit, which is a longterm, maybe mediumterm problem, not an immediate problem, and a concentration of getting people back to work in curing this economy. I would like to see much more spending on infrastructure. Let the government can borrow money at negative Interest Rates, theyre paying us to take money off their hands, borrow more money as a temporary increase in the deficit frankly, use that to invest in infrastructure, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, smart electric grid protection against hurricanes, whatever, which will make us more competitive in the long run. Right. Number one. Number two, give money to state and local governments, as we did in the stimulus bill but havent been doing since then so that they dont continue laying off Police Officers and firefighters, and teachers and so forth. And make investments in education in the next generation. And if we did that, put people back to work, get the economy moving again, if we got unemployment down to 5 , which is where it was in 2007, that by itself would reduce the deficit by 40 . Yeah, thats thats what id like to see. So shortterm stimulus, combination of ways of focusing on getting longterm investments right. Because those investments in infrastructure are key. Right. We used to invest close to 3 of gdp in infrastructure prereagan. Now we invest less than 1 . China invests 9 . Lo do you think is going to be more competitive 30 years from now in terms of efficient economy. George you were just arrested last week i think in the offices of senator dick dush v, illinois senator. Now someone might say well, why are you going after senator dick durbin . Hes your friend. Hes your ally. Hes a democrat, hes a progressive democrat in the senate. Why werent you in his offices getting arrested . I think that first obama term was like a dress rehearsal for progressives. We got some stuff right but at the end of the day it was like we got him elected and we thought he would govern and wed work in unison and this time around weve got to inject way more more post oosh election accountability. So yeah senator durbin is a great ally of ours but hes been part of this gang of six or gang of eight depending on the story, and you know, really trending in the wrong direction. A Bipartisan Group of senators in the house who had been working to the to try to hammer out some kind of deal they could take to the full senate. They seem to be backing away from the senate. Theyve got a shot at doing that. I think we need to in this second chance, were past the dress rehearsal, is actually get out on the streets, put tension, two of the big things that president obama did that he didnt plan on doing, would block the Keystone Pipeline, added tension in the relationship and the dream act work. And those were both times where people actually put tension into the relationship, put people on the streets, and made the administration react. And i think this time around it cant just be a handful of them doing that. We need a broader set of folks. Whats your ask in that office . I think we want to broaden the conversation. Feels like completely the wrong place. We started off with deficits. That was the frame. We should be talking about the jobs deficit and like a fairness deficit. So how do we expand the number of revenue options on the table . Nobody is talking about financial speculation in this debate. So you know, obamas now got 1. 6 trillion on the table which is certainly better than where we were last year. But why not add the financial speculation tax which if you went with congressman ellisons bill that would be 3 trillion over ten years, close more tax loopholes, tax shelters, cayman islands, generate real revenue. We have a graphic here that shows some of the, some of the revenue options, and one of the things that always gets said is, and ed conner here said thats a carbon tax. There are different proposals. We could raise taxes on income over 250,000. Thats on the table from the president. We could repeal Capital Gains tax break, financial transaction tax. Or we could limit u. S. Figures are annual little over ten years, yeah. Little over ten years. So theres and again, depends on how you structure this and what the actual number is, right . But you can you can end up in a situation where you can get a lot of revenue. One of the ways in which the conversation has been constrained is this idea of well, cant all be on the revenue side. Who says it cant all be done on the revenue side. Taxes as a percentage of gdp are the lowest theyve been since the 1950s. And we have already done it all on the spending side. Thats right. Thats one of the things that is sort of detracting the conversation always misses is that we have actually done, because of the debt ceiling deal the budget control act, about 1. 5 million in spending cuts. Trillion and a half. Trillion and a half, sorry. A trillion and a half in spending cuts. And we are, you know, we have discretionary budget caps right now which has been a longtime conservative aim and we are looking at, you know, in the out years, the lowest amount of federal spending, you know, the share of our economy in about 50 years. And that just doesnt make any sense if you look at whats actually going on with the working middle class in this country. And one way thats before any spending cuts that theyre out to negotiate. Exactly. Weve already done it. One of the ways to look at it is like elections have consequences, right . And like they won and provoked the debt ceiling crisis and we got the budget control act. That was a bill that reflected their priorities and the mandate they interpreted as having when they ran and those are locked in 1. 5 trillion cuts now we just had another election. And the democrats whooped up on them. And so its like the, the, the centerpiece of the conversation should be shifting, but joy as someone who covers this, i dont feel like the centerpiece has shifted except on the one issue the president mentioned, which is taxes at the top. Right. Its interesting because i think that it is a beltway fetish, this idea of a tax of tackling the deficit. And i think that is both, in washington, on capitol hill, but also in the media. The media, the beltway i think has bought into this idea that deficits are the primary conversation we should be having. But if you look at it as a historic matter, you know, what did fdr do wrong after injecting a huge amount of stimulus in to the economy he gave into the temptation to attack deficits than he did austerity which plunged the country back into a recession. What did europe do wrong . They responded to this huge economic crisis with austerity and in the case of Great Britain they went into a doubledip recession. Their economy is flatlined because of austerity. So, you know, president obama has a great opportunity to not make the mistakes of history and not make the mistakes of europe. Austerity doesnt work. The other issues and we talk about that budget fight, what youre saying accurately that after 2010, were going to try austerity, were going to do what the republicans want, which is cuts, we found out how difficult it is to find things to shave off the budget. There are only a few things to cut. Theres defense, theres Social Security, what are the big items in the budget . There isnt a lot out there. Particularly when you talk about noun defense Discretionary Spending which is basically the lowest level of spending in a generation. But congressman i want to hear about what the policy, how politics, i think theres some consensus at the table about what broadly division went ahead towards so the big question is how to get from here to there. Flattered when regenerist beat a 100 cream. Flabbergasted when we creamed a 500 cream. For about 30 regenerist microsculpting cream hydrates better than over 20 of americas most expensive luxury creams. Fantastic. Phenomenal. Regenerist. We have a conversation thats happening, the center of which to me seems wrong. The focus of which seems wrong. Not on mass unemployment and the massive waste of resources and livelihoods, and just Human Happiness that is represented by that. Just emotional level, just like, its like causing psyching destruction amongst our fellow citizens and depression for no good reason. Like we cant fix it. Thats not the conversation. Conversation is about what are the projections of the balanced payments in 2026. Okay, fine. So then the question is, as member of the United States congress, and as member of the minority in the United States congress in the house of representatives, what can be done . What are the actual political points of leverage to change this or do we just sit here on my show and go like oh, theyre saying the wrong thing . The main point of leverage is the socalled fiscal cliff, which isnt really a cliff, but, the fact is that come january 1st or so, all the bush taxes including those on people below 250,000 expire when the payroll tax cut expires the alternative minimum tax hikes up, sequestration of 1. 2 trillion dollars kicks in and various other tax breaks for moderate income people go away, that will hit the economy hard. And Everyone Wants to avoid that. Now we dont have to avoid it on jaush 1st. Right. If we make an agreement on february 1st, or march 1st, you can make it retro active. People get nervous. But we can do that. Theres no hard deadline, really. Right. But, the the one leverage we really have, i guess, pure republicans, saying what theyve been saying, is that all the leverage changes on january 1st. Right. Because right now, youve got to vote to extend taxes and theyre saying were not going to vote to extend the tax cuts without everybodys tax cuts not just for people under 50,000. After january 1st the tax cuts expire. Right. Theyre gone. Everybodys taxes have gone up. And now, you come in to the building and you say, lets reduce the following taxes, and there are the republicans. So that is that. Ive heard that is that what you want to see happen . Or well, i guess i think the one thing it seems like we all agree on is we have the wrong starting point, and deficits are the frame and thats where were starting and so we need to break that up. And then, at least i feel like the election created some opening, so we have this kind of fairness moment in america. And actually occupy, play a big role in that. I think people were feeling something wasnt working. Feeling a lack of fairness in their lives and somebody named it. Then it became real credence to what people were feeling and the election was about many things but i think it was about fairness. So i think to actually, i mean, an insider strategy will only get us so far. And a fight thats starting up on such a bad place. So what are we going to do . Youve got to go out and engage constituents all across the country to get into this. I think with the fiscal cliff frame also like i was in a cab on my way to the airport yesterday to get here and the cabbie is like theyve got to fix this fiscal cliff, the world is going to come to the end. We started saying no its the inequality cliff. Thats very deliberate. That frame is very deliberate to frighten people and set up the political nature to which people would do things they never would otherwise do such as voting to cut Social Security and medicare and medicaid. Which would normally be unthinkable. Youve got to do it to have a balanced solution. And i think its amazing the exconsistent to which despite the fact that weve had occupy, despite the fact that the wall street is their ultimate candidate mitt romney who is their embody, right, lost the election, we still frame everything in terms of what will hit the street. What will happen to wall street . Which made tremendous profits over the last four years. They havent been hurt at all. But theyre so terrified of this fiscal cliff, its their frame. Last week, former partner of bain capital the irony is two things are happening simultaneously. The one hand, as actors in the political sphere, people in the 1 and in finance and wall street are saying, oh, my god, were screwed. Our deficits are going to be too big, and its going to mean huge Interest Rates and a run on u. S. Treasuries, right . This is how they talk when theyre in the sphere of politics. Then during their day job when theyre trading bonds, right, the actual yields on the bond prices which is a market reflection. These are people who believe that market prices convey the right information, when theyre in their day job trading the bonds its historically low yields. All everyone cannot give the u. S. Government money fast enough and leave their jobs and take, sell it down to washington and say oh, my god its a total disaster the whole thing is going to blow up and go back to trading their bonds. And by the way, i saw some of the news mentioned the other day 448 days or Something Like that since the u. S. Was downgraded by one of the rating agencies. What are we going to do about it . What it shows is nothing will happen. The Rating Agency was dumped. Talk out this idea of direct action. I want you to talk me through where that goes. Because it seems to me like people are going to say, look, sorry, theres a republican the Republican House of representatives weve got to deal with them. I want to hear more on that when we come back. 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Theyll get straightforward guidance and be able to focus on other things, like each other, which isnt rocket science. Its just common sense. From td ameritrade. So you go to a Senators Office and you get arrested, or you have a group of people i dont want to minimalize that, its not fun to be arrested, but what is there is a disconnect. I think we all agree on that. Theres this conversation thats happening, theres a fear on some people that because of the president s that the president s resounding victory is in some ways a doubleedged sword. On one level it shows he campaigned on some of the progressive priorities, taxes at the high end, but also he doesnt have anyone to worry about. That he has freerange to make this deal. What is your theory of action here about how you exert some real kind of grassroots accountable on this conversation, which is happening on an insider baseball kind of way . Lets take the senator durbin action on friday what would have happened if people had moved into the streets, occupied the building and got arrested, we would have a signon letter from all the organizations in illinois saying dont do a bad deal. Like, thats not going to get it done. So, senator durbin is not used to having progressive people, people doing a demonstration. He definitely shakes up the way he thinks about this debate and makes him react. The senate is a key fire wall in ensuring we dont have a bad deal. Thats part of the theory. Secondly, this is difficult stuff to understand. This is, like, turn if you want i dont know were probably killing ratings now talking about the fiscal cliff. I think these demonstrations and the level of people putting their bodies on the line, these were like students, cleargy. I was in the holding tank with a senior who was 75, trembling, barely able to stand up with his face against the wall cuffed for three hours. Basically saying you all need to wake up because this is a big deal. You voted for fairness but you wont get fairness just because you voted. Thats a key. On the republican side, we know that a lot of people that voted republican are actually with us on this issue. So how do we get in there and actually start to organize people and build a wedge there. One issue, i want to show this, thats a key point. Like, heres bill crystal last week saying basically, you know, do we need to protect these tax cuts at the top. One of the most consistent polk results was that raising tacks on people at the top is incredibly popular. Its a majority position among republicans often. And the other popular position is dont cut benefits on medicare or Social Security. Thats a majority position among republican voters, too. What is amazing to me is you open up the paper, you watch on television, theres boehner, mcconnell, all these people saying he has to have major entitlement cuts, cuts in Social Security, medicare and medicaid. Right after the republicans got finished beating up on the democrats for allegedly taking 760 billion for medicare, thats terrible, now theyre insisting we have to take more money for medicare, medicaid, Social Security. The democrats are stupid enough to go along with that. They will criticize the democrats the next election. Thats a great point. Heather, you were in washington and watched the sausage making happen. How much leverage do you think there is . Thats a good question. I think unfortunately we may have to get through this period of time of complete detachment from reality. And then the conversation will shift as it will as people start to gear up for the midterms. People start looking out into the country again and saying, hey, were still at about 8 unemployment out here. Jobs are still the number one concern of voters. Not on the donor class, but of voters. Then theres going to be a whole, okay, we have all these recessionary spending caps, but what can we do to get people back to work. A bad deal can get baked in the interim. Is it possible to create, when you talk about medicare, Social Security, some reporting suggesting that jack lew who is the president s chief of staff, in the last round of these said medicaid, no, no no cant touch medicare. Medicare, i assume . No. This is on medicaid. Medicare search more open. Medicaid is a huge way of how the Affordable Health care act will get people covered. Medicare has already done some stuff, they have done stuff in terms of the payments providers, and in the president s proposal there are additional changes to payment formulas. Thats already on the table. But are there red lines for you, congressman, because heres an interesting way that this will come down. If theres any revenue at all in this deal, if there is a deal, theyre going to lose a lot of people on the House Republican caucus. They might lose 30, they might lose 40, they might lose 50, they might lose 60, maybe 70 did pending how much revenue is on the table. Which means in order for it to pass, nancy pelosi has to come over and knock on your door. What are your red lines on this . I suppose ill have a number of red lines. Number one, not a nickel in reductions and cost of living increases, Social Security, not a nickel in reductions to benefits to medicare and medicaid. Those are probably the most primary red lines. Then i would want to see thats interesting. I would want to see where you draw the red line, i dont know. I dont want to see more cuts in Discretionary Spending, i dont want to see increases to the military. I dont want to see revenue revenues, socalled, that will impact the middle class, like eliminating state and local taxes. Thats a very important one. Some of the proposals that are on the table now, they came from romney. They came from democrats saying great idea. Lets cap deductions at 35,000 or 40,000. That will, in a high tax rate like you are, that will really almost eliminate to a large extent, deductibility, state and local taxes. Which, in turn, will put more pressure on state and local golf t governments not to provide social services, and to cut their spending. It would ratchet it down. Would be amaze forget losing candidates signature policy, which is dealt with ad hoc reverse engineered around the things he didnt want to say, was what ended up being we see people like conrad saying its a good idea. Lets be clear, you can start reducing upper income deductions as you used to do. Thats one thing. But hard caps deductibility, local and state tax deductibility, out of the question. I want to get your sense of where the president is on this after the break. [ male announcer ] febreze. Eliminates odors and leaves carpets fresh. On gasoline. I am probably going to the gas station about once a month. Last time i was at a gas station was about. I would say. Two months ago. I very rarely put gas in my chevy volt. I go to the gas station such a small amount that i forget how to put gas in my car. [ male announcer ] and its not just these owners giving the volt high praise. Volt received the j. D. Power and associates appeal award two years in a row. Starts with ground beef, unions, and peppers baked in a ketchup glaze with savory gravy and mashed russet potatoes. What makes stouffers meatloaf best of all . That moment you enjoy it at home. Stouffers. Lets fix dinner. Joy, the president had a meeting yesterday with congressional leadership. What Smoke Signals do you think are coming from the white house about all of this . Its interesting, because functionally barack obama has been probably the most progressive president weve had in my lifetime certainly. But i do think that he, to a certain extent, believes in this idea of deficit reduction. Yeah. And i believe that confounds a lot of people on the left. Because he does seem to genuinely believe he needs to tackle deficits, partly because of the bill clinton example, that thats a legacy thing. I think he generally believes it. I think the concern for people on the left has to be that hes coming from a place of he does want to go at the deficit now. He would do a grand bargain. I think part of the grand bargain last time was a bit of saying if i give you this, everything you should want and you still say no, because i know youll say no then it shows youre shows that youre unreasonable. So i think we need to take that with a grain of salt. But he does subscribe this point is important. Im not huge for psychoanalyzing about public figures, but all the reporting, people that have been in meeting with the press, this is not some fabricated thing, its not out of convenience or political pressure, he believes that we need to get our fiscal house in order, we need to reduce the projections, stabilize debt to gdp, thats a genuine priority of the president of the United States. Heres what i would love for him to add to the conversation. Lets do it with a trigger of our own which is lets say put all this bake this all in the cake and say it doesnt come into play until we get down to 6 unemployment. Then youre actually teasing out what we know by the fiscal cliff which is if you go to austerity, it will cost jobs. Because boehner is now floating his thing yesterday was we have an architecture for a deal here, we come up with some other time device in the future. I keep thinking it gets worse and worse. Six months if we dont have a deal, well have to stab ourselves in the eye and then run around for a month naked in january. Keep doing the thing but dont do the thing. The thing is austerity. But everybody believes that ultimately we have to get our fiscal house in order and deal with the deficit. The divide is how do you deal with it . You dont do it with austerity, by cutting spending, driving your economy worse into a recession or depression, throwing more people out of work and having a bigger deficit which is whats happening in europe. You do it by spending the money to invest in people, in infrastructure, by putting people to work, and by reducing the deficit, by having more tax revenues as a result. I think the sequencing point here is key, what you said when you opened the show this struck me. We talk a lot, we want to put people back to work. We have a big gap between people who want to go to work and work that needs to be done, and people want to put money in the bank and pay for the costs. But this gap between people wanting to contribute and not being able to contribute in this country, thats a moral crisis. Thats got to be dealt with first. Thats a deficit. Its a miss match. Theres a trillion dollar demand deficit and also a generational deficit. Were talking about young people, if theyre lucky enough to graduate from college have graduated into a economy that says we dont want your labor. But we do want your debt paid. Exactly. We want your checks to the bank, but we dont want your labor, we dont want your ideas or contribution. And there is another way to go. We crunched some numbers and put out a proposal that jan took up which is that we could do the most economically efficient thing by getting people back to work by putting people back to work. We could have a million Public Service jobs, people from all over the country, young people flying to arizona, to nevada, working side by side to build this country back up. Not just hard infrastructure, but working in day care centers, child care centers. This could be a generationdefining thing that would be more economically efficient than putting people back to work. Just to take all the toy out of the idea of us think being a progressive future. The reality is the last time that we did an attack on the economic problem, the economic crisis, governors were given money, right, in the stimulus. But what did most of them do . They reduced their Public Sector work force. Most of the job decline has been because governors, states directly so did the federal government. But wait, wait. That was after the stimulus money wore out. The stimulus money that was given to states and local governments, about 240 billion kept local Public Servants at work, kept governments from laying off people, kept governments fixing the potholes. And that wore out, we didnt replace it. But at the federal level, we had also reductions in the federal work force. Were going after the post office at the federal level because guys in Congress Want to get rid of the post office and privatize it. Weve been basically throwing the car in reverse. Exactly. George, heather, thanks for joining us. When youre arrested outside congressman nadlers office, well have you back. Woel s well see you tomorrow, right . Occupy wall street going after debt destroying lives as we speak. Thats up next. If you are one of the millions of men who have used androgel 1 , theres big news. Presenting androgel 1. 62 . Both are used to treat men with low testosterone. Androgel 1. 62 is from the makers of the number one prescribed testosterone replacement therapy. 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Trumkas lament says something about the debt obsession, it has obscured also another much more dire debt crisis in america, one that continues to suppress Economic Growth and cause mass suffering for millions of american. Thats the overhang of household debt. Americans remain massively overleveraged with more than 11 trillion in household debt. Most of which is mortgage debt. There seems s ts to be no poli will to deal with this, which is why a new plan by organizers associated with occupy wall street is so fascinating. The offshoot called strike debt is raising money to buy debt for pennies on the dollar. Usually that debt is bought by third parties looking to collected on the amount owed by the borrower, but strike debt is buying the debt and canceling it. No questions asked. Theyre calling it a rolling jubilee. Since their online telethon on thursday night, they raised nearly 300,000 to buy or forgive nearly 6 million of debt. Joining me are the organizer of the jubilee, and the author of occupy america. Also sarah ludwig, and doug henwood, editor and publisher of the left business review. All right. So, i would debt . Why has have you guys come along organizing on debt as this singular issue . Well, we are part of an offshoot of occupy wall street called strike debt. Strike debt emerged out of the recognition that debt was sort of the way many people attracted to occupy wall street early on. They identified as debtors. So thinking back to an early day at the park, a young man was saying step right up, write down what youre worth to the 1 . People were putting down these incredible numbers. I remember a moment of hesitation in myself when i got nervous before writing down the 45,000 i owed in students loans. The girl behind me wrote down 120,000. An older woman wrote down a large 50,000 of medical debt. People were naming this and coming out. People involved in occupy from the beginning identified as debtors. This moved them to action. Strike debt emerged this summer, earlier this summer partly in solidarity with International Movements against austerity and in montreal students were protesting tuition hikes and wearing red squares, and pointing to bigger social problems, the privatization of all sorts of social services. So strike debt has come out of that. Why do you think it has the emotional resonance it does . Why was that the thing . I remember in the i am the 99 , that website, right, people were writing down their story. A lot of them were around debt, revolved around debt. Why do you think debt has the emotional resonance it does . Because debt is isolating, individualizing, and we are living in a society where we are under so much burden of debt that it just it makes sense when you look at the 99 , and 77 of americans have debt. And those that dont have debt are effected by it. That the choices we make in our lives, for example, are based on whether we can pay back or not. And what type of jobs well accept, who we become what jobs we decide out of school, what we decide as mothers, fathers in terms of children. I have a friend who used to work at a law firm, he still works at a law firm, he never liked his job but he stayed in it because he didnt want his children to take out loans to go to school. I was at the telethon on thursday night. I was struck by this thing that Jacqueline Lewis said. She talked about the biblical tradition of jubilee, and the way debt and freedom are intentioned. Take a look. A whole lot of our population is in shackles. Absolutely overwhelmed, cant get out of it. Credit card debt, paying, you know, 16 interest. Something you buy for 100 ends up costing you 2,000 before you pay it off. Education debt. Cant get out. Cant get a job. Cant get free. Hospital, health care debt. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Jesus who was a rabbi, who often many of us think of as the child of god, was saying this is the way to freedom. This is the way to liberation. Debt needs to be canceled. All of that cancellation is called a year of jubilee. I want to talk about the way debt shapes the lives of people in the communities that you work with and the role that debt plays in american capitalism. Having you ship my gifts couldnt be easier. Well, having a ton of locations doesnt hurt. And my daughter loves the santa. Oh, ah sir. That is a customer. Lets not tell mom. [ male announcer ] break from the holiday stress. Fedex office. And you pick the price that works for you. Great. Whoa, whoa, jamie. Watch where you point that thing. [ mocking ] watch where you point that thing. You point yours, i point mine. Okay, llets stay calm. [ all shouting ] put it down be cool everybody, just be cool does it price better on the side . No, it just looks cooler. The name your price tool, only from progressive. Call or click today. I got you covered. Thank you. Oh, youre so welcome. Side by side so you get the same coverage, often for less. Thats one smart board. What else does it do, reverse gravity . [ laughs ] [ laughs ] [ whooshing ] tell me about it. Why am i not going anywhere . You dont believe hard enough. A smarter way to shop around. Now thats progressive. Call or click today. [ grunting ] heres a chart that gives you a sense of the trends in debt. Its historical private debt to gdp ratio. And what you see is basically it peaks on the eve of the great crash that precipitates the great depression, then theres a massive period of deleveraging, and then it goes up again and peaks on the eve in 2007 at the end of the housing bubble on the eve of the second great crash. It started to come down, but theres a long way to go. Sarah, i want you to tell me about the communities you work in, how the role that debt plays in peoples live theres, how it structures peoples behavior and the decisions they make. Yeah. You asked before why debt resonates so much with people, its because theres been this explosion in credit and indebtedness. And we work with mostly lowincome people and people of color in new york city, and whats really plaguing them is abusive Debt Collection practices. So theyre wildly indebted, over half of households making less than 50,000 now use credit for basic expenses. So, to cover, you know, food, medicine, utility bills, so forth because we dont have we had stagnant wages, we dont have a living wage. People are absolutely struggling. You have one unforeseen, you know, visit to the emergency room and youre now wiped out financially. You have the fact that people dont have access to Affordable Health care, insurance, so we work with people who actually are being pulled into the world of harassing relentless debt buyers and collectors. Anyone who has gotten those phone calls knows its a plague and is focused on lowincome people in our experience. Debt collection, the debt buying industry has exploded. The idea is theres someone who cant pay back their debts, you tried to extract from them, you think ill get out of this while i can. Ill sell it to someone on five cents on the dollar that person has an incentive to hound the person, see if they can cut a deal to get six cents on the dollar, seven cents on the dollar. In 1995, the debt buying industry was 12 billion, by 2012, it was up to 215 billion. The average amount owed from Debt Collection rose from under 900 in 2003, to 1600 in 2012. So weve seen a rise in then industry of buying this debt, and weve also seen a rise in the amount that people owe. Doug, youve written, i think, sort of both affectionately and critically about what strike debt is doing. One point is, you made is that debt in and of itself plays an important role. And you say, well, debt is entrapping or something. But if you take out debt and you get a good education, thats a good investment in building up your skills, then you can pay it off, theres certain debt that debt in and of itself is not bad and plays a vital role. Well, that chart you had of the private debt to gdp ratio, falls off at the end. What we have been going through is people have been deleveraging. Thats why the economy is so stagnant. The economy is dependent on high levels of debt to keep going. Explain deleveraging. People paying off debt. Not paying debt. Getting rid of the amount they owe. Getting down the debt to income ratio. Weve been going through that for four, five years. A lot of countries have been doing something similar, but were further along. But debt, i think, is also a symptom. If we go back to the late 70s, early 80s when we first saw the volcker reagan crackdown. The end of inflation in the 70s, an assault on the living standards, union busting, all that, all the outsourcing, everything that has become familiar since, we have an economic on mass purchasing power f peoples living wages are under attack, how do you sustain the purchasing how power . Its through borrowing. The number of people seriously debt distressed, its a minority of the population. Its a suffering minority. I dont want to minimize their suffering, but its 10 , 15 of the population, but its a symptom of something much larger, the stress on living standards, the stress on incomes, the inability for people to make ends meet. We have a crazy health care system, education debt, education should be free. I wanted to talk about what produces this debt and get into the nitty gritty of how youll forgive it after this break. 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Side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach, and abnormal vision. To avoid longterm injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. Stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. This is the age of taking action. Viagra. Talk to your doctor. Good morning from new york. Im chris hayes here with writer astra, sarah ludwig, and doug henwood. We are talking about debt, the role debt plays in peoples lives and strike debt, the initiative from an occupy wall street offshoot, if thats a fair term. To essentially purchase distressed debt and forgive it sarah, you work with communities whose lives are structured by debt and hounded by collection agencies. We have to understand this debt buying and Debt Collection in the context of Financial Systems that is really predicated on inequality and exploitation. The way we understand the debt buying industry, its one more stop on the spectrum of exploited practices. So we know that credits exploded, but what kinds of credit . We have seen the banks made an absolute killing. We think about chase, bank of america. They have really targeted struggling people for highcost credit. They charge high Interest Rates. Jack in fees. Thats the business model. They know full well that in their highvolume of credit theyre issuing, that theres going to be a percentage of people that are not able to pay the debt. So lots of people are struggling to pay, so they make tons of money on that. Then they write off the debt that they dont collect after a certain number of days. They get a tax benefit from that. Then they also have spun off this whole debt buying industry. Can i play devils advocate . So people who support this system, they will say, a, theres long periods of time in which communities had no access to credit. It was an economic stranglehold. If you dont have access to credit, you cant take loans to start a Small Business or buy a house, people dont have access to credit, so lets fill that need by charging rates and having payday loans at 400 apr, which is really in communities of color and lowincome neighborhoods that is our financial system. We have a separate and unequal financial system, and so in this debt that gets sold, a huge percentage of it is medical debt and credit card debt, and so youve got people who are actually dont even know the way this is sold. Its so shoddy and flimsy, the banks, what they sell are spread sheets. They dont even have solid information. So theres absolute due process violations and so forth in the pursuit of this debt, because increasingly, what theyre doing is actually using the courts to go after people overwhelmingly low income people and people of color. Our focus on debt has to be considered in a continue Washington Mutual of analysis since september of last year. When you look at the 99 tumbler, you see whats aching people, but its missing the structural analysis. To us, debt, the focus on debt is both personal and structural. And it opens up space for imagining new ways, a set of social relations and its not about whether debt is bad or good. Thats actually a red herring. The thing about it is where is the socially useful debt and how do we produce that . What is interesting is that in some ways theres a conservative on forbes who wrote this trolling piece. Finally something a conservative can get behind. Its perky and not making any claims on the stacht just peote. Just people helping people. Charities more or less but with hipper music. Theres something amazing about that. Mutual aid, which is a very long tradition, but also, are you guys just running basically a charity here and people give money, donate it, and then you forgive the debt and then people will say well, the people that whose debt is being sold, collectors have basically given up on it anyway and can you even find the people whose debt youre forgiving . One of the beautiful things about this project is it actually has concrete effects. It will the money raised will go to abolishing peoples medical debt, and often, the credit card bills that they have to incur because they cant pay their medical bills, right . So it will be this very concrete effect on people as a consequence. But i think an equally important part of this project is the Public Education campaign and thats where it is more radical, because our analysis is deeper. I agree with doug that is a symptom and our job is to get people to take that step. One of our phrases is you are not alone, right . The situation youre in is not just you as an individual having made a mistake. You are not a loan. Right. This is political and personal. If you are the the driver who came and picked me up today bringing me to the show told me he had to get his appendix out and ended up with 40,000 in medical debt. Were saying okay, this debt exists because we dont have a system in place where theres health care, because health care is a commodity, and your debt is illegitimate. We want to do that Public Education so. The project is twofold. A year ago we started saying that the banks got bailed out, people got sold out. This is our answer. But its just the beginning, to highlight that no one should go into debt for basic needs. And if you look at the analysis from the 1930s, i mean, they were pushing debt on us, right . And these bubbles were created and what have you. And from the 1930s up until this point, we have gone from having social welfare type stuff for people in need to a debt fare state, where our most basic necessities of existence, we have to go into debt together. The American Dream is getting out of debt now. The young people, right . Its the key aspiration. We talk about organizing for the next generation, young people are so weighted down by student debt and other types of dealt. I just want to say that part of our project is this debt resi resisters operation manual that lays out our bigger analysis. And i think you have to understand all of our projects in tandem. Debt forgiveness is something that sounds, you know, either sort of spiritually inflicted or hippie or impractical, but theres been a strong economic case that the technical term for this, which is principal writedowns, which is saying the lend ser going to write off some portion of the principal, actually just take a haircut on that chunk of the loan. That would actually be good economic policy, it would make good sense. The imf even agrees with this. Pressing europeans not to be so hard on greece and spain. The germans dont want to hear this. But the imf actually supports this. But wouldnt it be possible to have some policy version of this that would be some kind of broad definition . Absolutely. We look at iceland, which is a very tiny place, a few hundred thousand people. But one of the ways they got through the economic crisis was the government went through all the business and personal loans saying well write this down by 10 , by 20 . It was a very orderly process. They stiffed their foreign creditors, too. We dont have the luxury to do that here. On the other hand, going through the debts and running things down, its orthodox capitalist practice. We didnt do that here. Part of the problem there is a political issue where people who are paying their debts resent it, people who they see as irresponsible get a break. Solidarity is sometimes lacking in this country. We should always remember, the launching moment for the tea party, it was people say oh, it angered the banks. It was on cnbc, Rick Santelli was yelling about the losers getting bailed out. It was going to sort of help people a little bit with their Interest Payments and Rick Santelli was crazy about it. You have to ask where is the true moral hazard in our financial system. And its really interesting, because with these debt buyers, what they do is they use the courts to go after people, and there are hundreds of thousands of lawsuits filed in new york city alone each year to go after people in Debt Collection. And the thing thats interesting is they get judgments through fraudulent means and they go on peoples Credit Report. So you start to spin out the focus on Debt Collection. You say well, if these judgments are going on peoples Credit Reports and they might be illgotten, then that impedes peoples access to jobs, to housing. One of the things i want to say here is you hear a lot about conservatives from freedom. One of the things thats profound about this is that being in deep debt and having a bad Credit Report and having that hang over you is a shackling thing. It does limit freedom, and if we want to maximize freedom, thats something we have to go head of on. People can go to rollingjubilee. Org. I want to thank aster and sarah, and my douglao. Will the president tackle Climate Change in his second term . Thats next. If you think running a restaurant is hard, try running four. Fortunately weve got ink. It gives us 5x the rewards on our internet, phone charges and cable, plus at Office Supply stores. Rewards we put right back into our business. This is the only thing weve ever wanted to do and ink helps us do it. Make your mark with ink from chase. [ female announcer ] for everything your face has to face. Face it with puffs ultra soft strong. Puffs has soft, airfluffed pillows for 40 more cushiony thickness. Face every day with puffs softness. Face every day if we want to improve our schools. What should we invest in . Maybe New Buildings . What about updated equipment . They can help, but recent research shows. Nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. Lets build a strong foundation. Lets invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. Lets solve this. The first time in what seems like a long while, the reality of Climate Change is back on the political agenda. Like many of you, i spent this election season increasingly depressed about the climates near total absence from the conversation. 19 days ago, the arrival of sandy and the death and destruction issue impossible to maintain. Since then andrew cuomo has talked about Climate Change and so has president obama both when he was asked about it on his News Conference and in his victory night victory speech. We want our children to live in america that isnt burdened by debt, that isnt weakened by inequality, that isnt threatened by the destructive power of the warming planet. What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of Climate Change and do you think the political will exists in washington to pass legislation that could include some kind of attacks on carbon . I am a Firm Believer that Climate Change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior, and Carbon Emissions. And as a consequence i think weve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it. We must rethink and redesign for the longterm because extreme weather, as we have learned, is the new normal. And at this weeks settlement with bp of wasnt a reminder enough of the hazards of pursuing fossil fuels, there are new pictures of black elk oil rig where an oil k explosion and fire injured 11 people. Even as the conversation has shifted, the stakes made more dramatically apparent and polling Shows Americans focused on climate peril, the basic political physics are almost as clear as the planetary physics. Making a serious dent in Climate Change requires taking action that will cost huge almost incomprehensible amounts of money to the wealthiest and corporate interests in the history of the world. The main challenge climate hawks face isnt absence of policy but building sufficient political power to make those policies a possibility. Joining me is bill mckib bon and founder of 350. Org which has launched a do the math, alana shore from green wire and a night science journalism fellow at m. I. T. And jerry nadler, an msnbc contributor joy reid. Bill mckib bon, i facetiously created you as a rock star because youre selling out big venues across the country. Ive been seeing people tweeting about it. People not familiar with the math that you were talking about, what is the math . What are you trying to communicate on this tour . This came out of this piece i wrote for Rolling Stone this summer that became one of their most shared pieces because it laid out finally the rock and the hard place. Right. Weve got if were going to keep the temperature from going up past 2 degrees, which is what everybody in the world, including the u. S. Government has said is too high, thats the red line. Right. We want to keep it below 20 degrees. Even that is going to cause a lot of dislocation and problems. If we were smart we would stop way short of two. Thats the best that nel one government will commit to. The scientists tell us we can burn about 550 gig dag tons more carbon, 550 billion tons more carbon which sounds like a hell of a lot but were burning 30 some billion tons a year. We get about 15 years at current rates before we shoot past that threshold, and thats the good news. The bad news, the third number, the really scary one is that last year a group of financial analysts added up how much carbon the fossil fuel industry had in its reserves. That numbers about 2800 gigatons or five times as much, and theyre going to burn it. Unless we figure out how to stop them, thats what exxons share price is based on when pea body coal borrows money, thats their collateral. Theres no room for doubt where this story goes. We have this graphic to illustrate it. So the total amount of fossil fuel reserves, if you guys can put that up, right . Thats 27 trillion. And then the amount that we can safely burn is about 5. 4 trillion, right . Exactly. And safely in quotes. Safely. That Little Orange slice, thats the budget. Right . Thats the budget for here until whenever. As long as we can kind of. 150 anyway. We call civilization keep it going. The blue part is the part that has to be left in the ground. Exactly right. What that means since the oil industry and the coal industrial are intent on burning the blue part, what it means is, there and what the point were trying to communicate with this do the math tour is that theyre the equivalent now to the safety of the planet that the Tobacco Industry became to individual health. Okay . These are outlaw companies. Theyre not outlawing against the laws of the nation. They get to write those. But they are outlawing against the laws of physics. I want to jump in and actually deliver even worse news. Awesome, great. Sorry to bum folks out, but Price Waterhouse coop ser one of the biggest Insurance Firms in the world five days before the election came out with a report and the cover said too late for 2 degrees. Bills been doing this for longer than i have. They crunched the numbers. Never since world war ii have we gone above 1 in our total decarbonization in terms of how much carbon were able to stop burning, take out of the atmosphere, et cetera. Never above one. They calculated for the next 39 years wed have to go above 5 . Were currently averaging. 7 to. 8 decarbonization a year. He global agreement, but is it even possible . Unless we change very fast. Were going there. Think about the gargantuan sums of money those same industries spent to attempt to elect mitt romney and defeat president barack obama. I mean, these were the people, if you think about the koch amorphous. They are this industry. Theyre pike teres compared to the biggest fossil fuel companies. Absolutely. The biggest fossil fuel companies, i dont know if the Biggest Companies care that much who is in office. I feel like they. I agree. They genuinely feel they could basically work their magic on both sides. You know, were going to have a really interesting early test case. And thats this Keystone Pipeline thing that went away for a while because the president said were going to spend a year studying it. Well, you know, in the course of that year, Mother Nature filed her public comments. We will the hottest year in american history. We had epic drought. We melted the arctic and then we had this small storm that filled the new york city subway system with water. That aside, the oil industry is still pretty sure. The head of the American Petroleum institute said last week we had implicit promises from the Obama Administration that we would approve this pipeline. Were going back to d. C. On sunday to thousands of us to remind the white house we havent forgotten. I want to talk about the pipeline. I do think theres good news on the horizon and some kind of breakup in some of the political stalemate that weve seen right after this break. Into their work, their name on the door, and their heart into their community. Small business saturday is a day to show our support. A day to shop at stores owned by our friends and neighbors. And do our part for the businesses that do so much for us. On november 24th, lets get out and shop small. The Keystone Pipeline is a pipeline that would bring Tar Sands Oil from canada down into the u. S. And Tar Sands Oil is particularly toxic. Carbon intensive stuff, right . Its ot not the easy light sweet crude. Disgusting i think is the technical term. Its disgusting stuff but its valuable. Thats why theyre pulling it out and bring it down. It turned into a political football. Theyre bringing it to the gulf coast to export a lot of it. To export it. So it became this issue. I think republicans thought they had a real issue when some effective activism by 350. Org and other climate activists managed to essentially put pause on it. The state department had to give it its seal of approval and didnt before the election. And immediately, i think the next day, you already saw the American Petroleum institute starting to move on this. Congressman, as someone who has to get elected and work with other people, get elected and some of them have to get elected in swing districts, the republicans thought they had the upper hand on the story of the pipeline. I wonder what you think the political terrain looks like for blocking it or for talking about the fact that ripping every cell out of carbon is a problematic endeavor. I think a lot of this depends, frankly on president ial leadership. Hes got the bully pulpit. Were not going to get very far if he doesnt use it. It really comes back to the administration. We just had election in which democratic the key stone pipeline wasnt that huge an issue. No, they thought it was going to be. Because the president put it off and said were going to do it or make a decision, et cetera, it sort of got taken out of the election. On the other hand, a lot of Democratic Candidates got pretty badly bashed in places like pennsylvania, ohio, West Virginia appalachians by the administrations war on coal. Was the war on coal . Saying hey, weve got to be careful how much we take, how we use it, about the carbon footprint, et cetera. And so youve got a part of the Democratic Party, not to mention the Republican Party which does not want any limitations and certainly not carbon tax or anything because they get killed at home. The war on coal is basically being waged by something called Natural Gas Prices. Much more than its being waged by the Obama Administration. Thats the reality, but the but it was used as a political weapon. It was. And this i guess i dont want to linger too much on doom and gloom, but we have reduced there has been a remarkable reduction in Carbon Emissions in the u. S. I mean, were down to 1990 levels. Right . You know, it going down is going in the right direction, right . There are two things happening that might go in the right direction. One which the administration deserves a lot of credit on is energy conservation. Higher cafe standards. Fuel efficiency. Fuel efficiency and the other which hopefully, which actually is part of this whole Budget Discussion although people arent really focusing on it, do we renew the tax credits for wind and other alternative Energy Sources . The republicans dont want to renew that at all. They want to renew the tax credits for coal and oil as if the companies arent profitable enough already. Thats the first step even before the keystone. Absolutely. I think a real untold story agreed that Natural Gas Prices have helped drive coal share down to 34 of generated electricity in america which is huge. It used to be 50. But a huge portion that have is renewables. September, 100 of the new electricity generated in america was renewable. 100 . But i mean i think you also have the attention the other way. Congressman nadler got to it. You have a lot of people day to day livelihood in plays like West Virginia, louisiana. While their environment is being destroyed, if you think about louisiana as a state that is being literally destroyed by the industry that employs a good number of the people there. So every mechanism in that state is designed to protect an industry thats destroying the state. But people as real lives are tied to it. Even democrats, someone like Jay Rockefeller who is considered a great prerogative when it comes to coal, hes are with the republicans. Anyone who is going to be elected there are certain places where its the geographic interests override the ideological ones. Thats why is we need some actually leadership from the president , and others on the really central issues. I mean, look, Climate Change is the legacy issue of all legacy issues. You know, 100 years from now, the only thing that people are going to look back on 2012 and care about. The fiscal cliff or the its like, you guys the arctic melts and you didnt do anything about it . Why is that . Keystone is one pipeline. The Canadian Company is planning to double the same pipeline that leaked. Say obama rejects keystone. A lot of that oil is going to come down a pipeline double the size of michigan. Theyre looking to a pipeline in the east because of the west. Now theyre trying to ship it east. I also want to talk about, my question is the president ial leadership aside and i think the bully pulpit could be overrated. You still have the House Republican caucus. The question, i want to hear from you the theory of change here that is like attacking this problem that isnt just more speeches from barack obama. After we take this break. [ woman ] ring. Ring. Progresso. I just finished a bowl of your new light Chicken Pot Pie soup and its so rich and creamy. Is it really 100 calories . Let me put you on webcan. Lean roasted chicken. And a creamy broth mmm i can still see you. [ male announcer ] progresso. You gotta taste this soup. A wit takes some doing. Snt just happen. Mmm i can still see you. Some coordinating. And a trip to the one place with the new ideas that help us pull it all together. From the things that hang and shine. To the things that sparkle and jingle. All while saving the things that go in our wallet. More saving. More doing. Thats the power of the home depot. Create a musical light show with the maestro mouse voice activated ornament. Theres no doubt that for us to take on Climate Change in a serious way would involve making some tough political choices. And you know, understandably, i think the American People right now have been so focused and will continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and growth that you know, if the message is somehow were going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address Climate Change, i dont think anybodys going to go for that. I wont go for that. President answering the question on Climate Change in the press conference on wednesday. So bill, i mean, president ial leadership, sure, important. I guess. But given the obstacles that you have laid out so convincingly, it seems to me theres something much bigger that has to happen. You all are deeply focused on washington all the time. Maybe its time to move our gaze a little bit. The reason we set out on this do the math tour 350. Org, to say after 20 years of sending is the worlds greatest scientists up on the hill and nothing happening, maybe its time to rethink the game plan. The problem here in the end is the fossil fuel industry. Exxon made more money last year than any company in the history of money. These guys have more money than god. And that means that were going to need to put a little hurt on them if were going to have any chance of changing politics in washington or in beijing or in a lot of other places. We set out on this tour, which has been drawing huge crowds across the country to spark a campaign, a campaign that looks in part like the one that helped bring down apartheid south africa. Were getting colleges to to huge pressure on them to divest. The First College in america last week we were in portland, maine, in a huge packed out theater and the president of little Unity College stood up and said our board of trustees just voted to sell all our stock in the fossil fuel industry. Were going to turn these guys into the Tobacco Industry if we can. And if we do, maybe it will open up a little more room for people like barack obama to be a little more courageous than theyve been. I think another piece of good news too, youre seeing the media kind of get rid of that false balance where they were giving climate skeptics equal air time. I dont think thats happening as much as it used to. No, i think that has changed a lot. The problem is its been replaced by lack of coverage. When theres a controversy, you can cover controversy. When there was a bill on climate on capitol hill, you can cover the bill on capitol hill. Is it going to pass, its not. Heres the bad news. Mother nature is going to continue to give us ample opportunity to talk about this issue because this is going to be the hottest year in american history. Its fought trails only last year as the year with the most expensive disasters in american history. You know, were getting hit hard all the time. When the cover of that radical rag business week says its global warming, stupid, you know things are starting to shift. You also have to break the rights stranglehold on the base of the Republican Party. We were talking a little bit on the break how its become almost an evangelical mean that you must not believe in Climate Change. Theyve evangelized this because youve married the religious right to the corporate right in a way that is unseemly if youre a religious person but that has gotten the base of the Republican Party which informs their politicians. They are not permitted in a lot of ways to believe or accept the idea of Climate Change as a matter of faith. Now youve been calling a terrarium xwlarks the right has finally seen wait a minute, baby our media isnt being honest with us about polls and things like that. This might be an opportunity to start to get at the base of the Republican Party. There is an almost religious as a matter of faith, they dont believe in Climate Change. Several things are the case here. Number one, bill is entirely right. Mother nature is going to hit us over the head repeatedly. Well see more and more tremendous storms, more and more huge wildfires, droughts, and so forth. And the information is going to get out there that this is related to global warming. Number one. Number two, you have this tremendous interest in the status quo. These Huge Companies that have tremendous resources and money and can control politics through money, regions of the country, you know, working people depend on coal and oil and so forth. You probably have to do two things simultaneously. One is do what you candy vesment to demonize to point out bad things. The other thing is bribery. You probably. Says the congressman. Yeah, well, you probably have to show both people in West Virginia and appalachia and louisiana and companies how you can continue to be employed on changing things. How we can we should have programs, we used to talk about military conversion. We should have programs to say take mr. Oil company, take your resources and get into wind, get into something else. And employ these people in West Virginia. The really good news the last couple weeks has been coming not out of the United States, but coming out of europe. The German Energy minister in the conservative government of Angela Merkel said last week, were going to scream past our targets of Renewable Energy and be at 50 Renewable Energy by 2020 or 2022. We may be at 66 . Its coming. There were days this summer when germany generated more than half the power it used from solar panels within its borders. This is germany. Munichs north of montreal. They dont have texas, california, nevada, arizona. The biggest immediate battle which is not getting the attention it should, in fact, its getting very little attention is part of this whole fiscal mess coming up is the existing tax credits for renewables expire. And you see republican senators saying above all else, dont renew them. I think that position though, congressman, it has to break. You see more and more republican governors from red states. We have to insist on that. Thats the most immediate thing. One big question i think is when you get on a path, if theres going to be a sort of Virtuous Cycle that can be kicked in with renewables in which things start to beat their expectations and i want to hear about what that future might look like after this break. [ male announcer ] if youre eligible for medicare. Nows a good time to think about your options. Are you looking for a plan that really meets your needs . And your budget . As you probably know, medicare only covers about 80 of your part b medical expenses. The rest is up to you. So consider an aarp Medicare Supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. Like all standardized Medicare Supplement plans, they pick up some of what medicare doesnt pay. And could save you in outofpocket medical costs every year. Call today to request a free decision guide. With this type of plan, youll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. 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Theres this kind of stages of denial, this kind of like stages of climate denial and its like well, no, the earth isnt warming. Well its warming. Well its not humans. It is humans. If we do do something about it then china and india arent going to do something about it and its a wash. This is the iea report, Global Demand energy grows by more than onethird over the period 2035. People will say look, even if we get our house in order, and i hear this all the time from people not in the denialist camp. You joy had a question during the break. Were talking about whats happening in germany and theres advancements here in america as well as europe. What about china . If china is the big sort of elephant in the room in terms of emissions what, are they doing . I did a big piece for the national agree geographic on china and energy. Its incredibly complicated. China is burning a lot of coal. Theyll never catch up with us but theyre putting a lot of carbon out in the atmosphere. At the same time, theyre leading the world in the installation of renewable technology. 250 million chinese when they take a shower at night, the hot water comes off the roof. Thats 25 of that population. In this country, solar hot water accounts for less than 1 of our homes and most of that is for swimming pools. Heres the thing. If you go to the guy who runs the biggest of these solar hot water companies, huong min, in his private museum the pride of place goes to an old rusting solar panel. Do you know what that is . No. Thats my best possession. That was one of the solar panels that jimmy carter put on the white house in 1979 and Ronald Reagan took down in 1985 because he wanted manlier forms of energy. Its not that we lack germ and china have better technology. That and put it in his private museum in china . I love that story. We have the technology. We have the entrepreneurs. We just dont have the political will to do anything with it because weve got the Koch Brothers and exxon and everybody else in the way. We also have a reflexive ideological resistance to government playing a big role. I actually talked to mitt romneys policy director a few weeks before the election. I asked him, you know, what do you think government can do to make coal cleaner, carbon capturing sequestration by doesnt exist on a usable scale. He said i dont think government should play a role at all. There you go. Theres the barrier. Government should play no role except tonight provide massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry decade after decade. Can the subsidy for cleaner coal. This is where the tax extenders issue which i think it brings us nicely full circle because we started out talking about the fiscal curve. The issue has gotten very much lost, right, when you stack up the issues its down at the bottom. Whether you pass all the taxes or not defines the baseline that you then calculate your savings on. It matters a tremendous amount. In those tax extenders are these Renewable Energy tax credits. The problem is that theyre constantly sunsetting. I know people ho work in solar and you say i want to raise Capital Investment on a program that will have this rate of return on investment if and only if the tax cuts get extended. They sunset every seven days or whatever the heck they are. Its like every year. So when you cant build in any longterm projection, this hurts investment, right . Absolutely. And we ought to when we extend that, we ought to extend it for a good long period of time. Thats my point. What is the length of the various subsidies for coal and oil . But theyre not annual. Theyre part of the tax code. Theyre not specific provisions that are part of extender nz. Theyre basically the depletion allowance. Its just part of the irs code. When you try to have this conversation with republicans, they yell solyndra and they walk away. I want to put in a plug on this. You rarely hear a bipartisan bill in energy. Ted poe, a republican from texas is sponsoring a bill that would allow companies to have access to a Master Limited partnership. This is the way you structure a company but renewables dont get to it. It can be built into the law to allow them to raise easier capital. Ted poe, republican from texas. You dont hear about these smaller bills. Thats fascinating. Bill mckiben, people can find where 350. Org do the math tour is going to be at the website. Math. 350. Org. Ill say this. Its been really exciting. Sort of a new moment. Look, the Environmental Movement went dormant for a while. But starting with keystone and now people are really waking up. Theyre understanding that this is the question of a lifetime. So what do we know we didnt know last week . My answers after this. For chri . Yeah, sure you can. Great. Wheres your gift . Uh. Whew. [ male announcer ] break from the holiday stress. Ship Fedex Express by december 22nd for christmas delivery. Prego . but ive bought ragu for years. [ thinking ] wonder what other questionable choices ive made . I choose date number 2 whooo [ sigh of relief ] [ male announcer ] choose taste. Choose prego. So what do we know now we didnt know last week . That democrats cannot count on new yorks supposedly ra democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo as an ally. Every democratic primary voter in the entire country should know that, too. We already knew in the runup to the election, andrew cuomo whose aspirations for National Office are wellknown did essentially nothing to aid the party in its quest to steak back the state senate from republicanz. While his reason for not endorsing democrats in contested races with republican alphabets was he did not want to wound those republicans who voted for the successful marriage equality. That the explanation doesnt address his refusal to endorse the democratic candidate in one race where the incumbent republican had been defeated in the primary by a tea party challenger. We know we never got an explanation from him for his lack of endorsement in that race and even without his help, democrats managed to win an apparent majority in the state senate with the two seats still being recounted. Just as it looked like democrats would win back the senate majority, sin cough Felder Brooklyn democrat elected as a democrat announced just a few days after he ran and run as a democrat that he would caucus with the republicans putting the republicans just one seat away from a majority pending the outcome of those two unresolved races. Despite the facts hes the leader of the Democratic Party in the state and wishes some day to be the nominee for president it, he has refused to intervene with felder saying he wont insert himself into the controversy. Watching this unfold, one cant help suspect that abdrew cuomo actually does not want a democratic majority in the state senate because a republican majority gives him more of an opportunity to burnish his bipartisan compromise or bone nan fides before launching his president ial campaign and much, much more insidiously, we suspect he doesnt want a democratic majority because it stands ready to past a whole rost of Ground Breaking progressive legislation including Public Financing for electionses, maish decriminaliation and a minimum wage hike among others. The governor says he favors all those policies but in this case he sure is not tacting like it. We are almost entirely sure that very soon andrew cuomo will be coming before many of the people watching this show asking for your support in a democratic primary race to be the next president. You should remember this remarkably cynical display when he does. Governor cuomos office did not respond to our request for comment on some of the specifics we just discussed but we invite the governor to come on anytime. I want to find out what my guests now know when didnt know when the week began. Mr. Kiben . The thing thats become very clear since the election is that were really going to find out now when it comes to energy and climate what the president is all about. He no longer has to worry about ever again about the fossil fuel industry coming down on him in election. Were going to have really stark pure tests like keystone where hell get to find out whether or not hes thinking about the future or not. Oh, im sure. The army corps of engineers we knocked them for being antienvironment and for good reason but what blew my mind, after hurricane sandy, the arm corps sent hydrologic specialists to new york. They removed enough water from our subway system to fill central park two feet above the ground. The New York Times did this amazing piece, one of these pieces you read as a journalist, youre like i wish i had of could have written that piece. They did a piece about how the tunnels in new york got drained and how the mta got the subway system got back working in a miraculous fashion. You had even the strap hangers campaign this group that beat up on the ta all the time. Trying to get Better Service for folks saying this is close to magic whats happened. Its a good reminder in the climate discussion, we are capable of amazing things. We are capable of amazing things. And the new york city subway system is a miracle of sixization. Dont forget for a minute that there are still people out in the rockaways and on the jersey shore and one of the great things that happened this week is that the occupy movement turned into a kind of Relief Movement and occupy sandy has been doing remarkable stuff. Congressman nadler. Well, we were reminded of one thing that we knew which is the utter hypocrisy of the u. N. And the nonaligned movement when it comes to israel and the middle east that said nothing when hamas fired over 500 or 600 missiles at israeli civilians, each missile being a war crime. And when israel finallien hit back by attacking a leader of the militants and started attacking launch sites, suddenly theres a u. N. Security Council Meeting and the nonaligned movement condemns israel. We also learned that despite the ravings of governor romney about obama throwing israel under the bus and the ravings of the Republican Jewish Coalition and other elements of the jewish community, when push comes to shove, the Obama Administration stood by israel. Well discuss gaza tomorrow. Theres been asymmetry in the moral intent has been to go after civilians stated aim of the idf is to avoid civilians. In the actual death toll, were seeing more civilian lives in gaza dead than israelis. I want to make sure people are aware of that. Well talk about this much more tomorrow, joy. We now know that the beltway sort of means that there was a lack of africanamerican enthusiasm to reelect the president was a myth. Africanamericans voted in the same or larger numbers in 08 in almost every one of the key swing states. We also know of this week that of the destructive Dangerous Technology tied to the exattractive energies are actually built in africanamerican communities. The community is very energized to continue its activism into the second temple. I think the africanamerican community, especially black churches should be brought into the movement on Climate Change. My thanks to bill mckibben, elana schor, joy reid. Thank you for getting up and join us tomorrow sunday morning. Well take on the petraeus scandal with the author of the generals and well be talking about gaza. Coming up next, ma lis ha harrisperry. Why does abe lincoln suddenly seem to be from we look. Melissa harrisperry coming up next. Well see you here tomorrow at 8 00. Id like to thank eating right, whole grain, multigrain cheerios mom, are those my jeans . [ female announcer ] people who choose more whole grain tend to weigh less than those who dont. Multigrain cheerios tend to weigh less than those who dont. Is bigger than we think. Sometimelike the flu. Fer from with aches, fever and chills the flus a really big deal. So why treat it like its a little cold . Theres something that works differently than overthecounter remedies. Prescription tamiflu attacks the flu virus at its source. So dont wait. Call your doctor right away. Tamiflu is prescription medicine for treating the flu in adults and children one year and older whose flu symptoms started within the last two days. Before taking tamiflu tell your doctor if youre pregnant, nursing. Have Serious Health conditions, or take other medicines. 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