Moyers & Company; 118; Fighting for Fair Play on TV and Taxes

You How do we afford this level of government if we want to keep it? Do we want to keep it? How are we going to pay for it? If we're going to cut where are we going to cut? Those are key questions and that's what the selection should be about. And I'm looking for absolutes. I'm not interested in the neoliberal agenda. I'm not interested in bipartisanship. I'm interested in social change that actually puts society back with the people.

Funding is provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. The Colberg Foundation, Independent Production Fund, with support from the Partridge Foundation, a John and Pauli Guth Charitable Fund, the Clements Foundation, Park Foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. The Herbalpert Foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The Bernard and Audrey Rappaport Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. More information at Macfound.org and Gumowitz. The Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation, the HKH Foundation, Barbara G. Flaishman, and by our sole corporate sponsor, Mutual of America, designing customized individual and group retirement products. That's why we're your retirement company.

Welcome. The presidential campaign is often running, often running from one fundraiser to another. President Obama has already said a record. The Financial Times reports almost 200 events at which he's rattled at 10 cup. More than his four predecessors combined. He's ahead overall with $104 million, the last time papers were filed with the Federal Election Commission. That's 10 times more than what Mitt Romney's campaign had in the bank. But Romney is the darling of the Super PACs. Pro Romney PACs have collected 10 times as much from the friendly rich who prefer to give anonymously. And even when he's the draw, you don't see much of the candidate. At a New Jersey fundraiser the other day, Mitt Romney vacuumed up $400,000 in one hour at a private home while the press was safely cordoned off by police. No peaking allowed. But while only a few people will actually see the

candidates up close between now and November, we will be seeing the commercials that all that money is buying. They're coming at us now fast and furious. I balance the budget every single year. You don't quit and neither does he. Job creation numbers fall for the third straight month. But don't despair. You don't have to watch all of them because we have Kathleen Hall-Jamison for that. Our master, media decoder and her vigilant team at the University of Pennsylvania's Endingburg Public Policy Center scarcely miss a bubble along the political beat. At the website, factcheck.org and the new flakcheck.org. Their job is to critique, watch, analyze and share what they find out. Kathleen Hall-Jamison, thank you for being with me. Thank you. One of the big stories this week was the defeat in the Republican primary of Senator Richard Luger after 36 years in the Senate and he attributes his defeat in the statement

he made after his concession to the determination of conservatives and right wingers to bring him down. And he says it was because of his vote for the TARP program for government support of the auto industry for the start treaty and for the confirmation of two of Obama's nominees to the Supreme Court, Sotomayor and Kagan. We have now lost individual who was willing to do what he thought was right even when that meant working across the aisle. He's a conservative. He wasn't a moderate by most definitions. And as he notes in his statement during the Reagan period, he was a reliable Reagan supporter. You'd call him a Reagan conservative now which tells you how far the party has moved by losing him in the Senate. What we've lost is a person who has dedicated much of his life to nuclear and non-proliferation to try to make sure that those dangerous weapons don't get in the wrong hands and that we have fever of them overall. He worked with Barack Obama on that and the Obama campaign in 2008 featured that in ads. The single most important national

security threat that we face is nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. What I did was reach out to Senator Dick Luger, a Republican to help lock down loose nuclear weapons. That fact was used against Senator Luger, the fact that he worked with someone across the aisle. So what does this mean for the polarization that already has caused such disaffection among the American people? What does it mean for resolving something like nuclear proliferation? It means that if you're going to get action, you're going to have to have both parts of Congress and the presidency controlled by the same party because you're always under this set of assumptions going to produce gridlock otherwise and you're going to condemn anyone who tries to break that gridlock by reaching across the aisle in order to find a point of common ground. Essentially, Senator Luger was defeated because of this efforts to find principled common ground on issues that he thought were important. Many people I respect including you say that this period between the election in November

and the inauguration of other President Obama again in January or President Mitt Romney is a very dangerous period because the Bush tax cuts expire. The deficit has to be dealt with. There are other issues that cannot wait any longer and that there's going to be a road block in that period of time unless somehow they do find the Richard Luger. Where are they going to come from? I don't know but we're facing what some have characterized as a fiscal cliff. This country has got to find a way to grapple with these issues at a time in which our system is proving to be dysfunctional because of the driving force of polarization. So what do people watching regular voters out there, ordinary citizens who don't have much time for politics? What should they be doing between now and then? First, we have to do everything that we can as a journalistic and academic community to focus this election on things that matter and to focus on issue distinctions between candidates that can actually translate into governance. There's a piece

that the Obama campaign put up this last week. It was called Life of Julia that projects from the age of three through 67 how Julia would be affected by various government programs that are actually already in effect. Frame Julia for us. What Julia are you talking about? Julia is a two-dimensional figure created on a slide show by the Obama administration as a means of showing what government currently provides under the Obama administration and so Julia at three has head start. At as she ages she benefits from the fact that she gets to stay under parents insurance thanks to the patient protection and affordable care act. When Julia faces potential pay discrimination she's protected by the Lead Better Act. The first act signed by President Obama. Which means that she can file a discrimination suit if she is not getting a comparable pay to a man who's doing the same kind of job and she doesn't have an odd notification period requirement. Meaning you could be discriminated

against, not know it and as a result lose your right to sue. When she reaches Medicare and Social Security, she's able to retire and so it's an attempt by the Obama administration to say what does government currently do for you and with you and in the process they're making some assumptions that are suspect assumptions. The Republicans respond by saying that's the nanny state and that's the answer of dependency and they lay up their alternative about what they think would happen if the Republican scenarios played out better job growth etc etc. The libertarians come in and do something that's very interesting. They basically say both of you are part of the nanny state. You Republicans and your Democrats and we marginalize the libertarians a lot. The libertarian critique is actually an important critique. One of the things that the libertarian take on Julia says is her father is you know smoking marijuana he gets arrested and put away. We've still fighting two wars we're not paying for. There basically is this other third critique out there that looks at the long term and says we can't sustain these things. That's what makes the Julia narrative

for me very valuable. It casts the long term as our perspective not the short term and if you look literally at what the Obama tracking of Julia's life in this slide show does it says this is what government currently does. How much of it are you ready to give up if we can't afford to sustain that's my reading on Julia. The Obama people want me to read that and say vote for Obama you get to keep it. Vote for Obama you don't get to keep some of it because its economic assumptions are not consistent with what we know the real world is but I like the fact that we're asking the question how do we afford this level of government if we want to keep it. Do we want to keep it how are we going to pay for it if we're going to cut where are we going to cut those are key questions and that's what this election should be about. But do you hear or see Romney and Obama addressing these tough choices in ways that reassure you. No and if we have an election campaign in which they don't and they act responsibly we're going to disconnect campaigning from governance

and when we have a campaign in which they don't it's less likely that they will and as a result we run the risk that we are actually going to hurt the country dramatically because the polarization is making it much much more difficult for people to find the common ground that they need. When Speaker Boehner and President Obama came as close as they did to a grand bargain we were seeing the possibility that government could work. When on each side the people from the left and the right said no you can't give that no you can't give that we saw the problems of polarization the leadership impulses of the Speaker and the President were the right impulses how do we draw them forward in order to get the right decisions for the country in an environment which we cannot continue to do what we're doing. I'm going to get a lot of emails from my viewers saying please don't have that woman again she's making me think too much she makes my head hurt because these are tough choices. They're extremely tough choices and we can't afford not to make them because if we don't make them the alternative is unsustainable for the country and the people who

say well we're going to find a way to cut should be explaining why that's enough and we've had an interesting moment in which the governor Romney was caught on a microphone in which he said well we'll cut housing we'll cut education well I'd like to see him say that in public and explain why I'd like to see both sides say with social security here's what we should do I'd like to see them debate Simpson Bolts I would like to see a commission that recommended compromise on both spending and taxes yes and had distinguished individuals from both political parties it is it makes tough recommendations and I would like to see in the absence of the candidates having the courage to take the position someone lay out the case for the Simpson Bolts alternative so the public understands what it is so that we begin to build some consensus about what the trade offs look like what the costs are going to be and what we need to do to sustain this country for future generations how do we do that I think we do it by having the media feature in intensely

as an alternative and explain why it is important that's what we need to do in the presidential debates we're going to have them when they don't answer the question the next person option for go hit her her question and ask the question again and if the entire debate has to simply ask the question then let's ask what about Simpson Bolts don't you like mr. President you know governor Romney what about it do you like are you ready to advance to to say that we should move the social security age to 70 in some kind of a phased in structure should we be doing means testing in some ways what are your alternatives when you say you're going to reform the tax code is that an excuse for saying you're going to do nothing how much money can you get out of the reforms that you are offering and what are you going to eliminate and what are you going to cut right now we're playing this game right now you've got the Ryan budget proposal Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and to his credit there is a proposal there the first thing the Democrats did in response was to say hi we're going to assume he's cutting everything across the board so they started pushing on the assumption that this good thing is going to be cut this good thing this

good thing by x percent Congressman Ryan response no I'm going to get rid of some things entirely and I'm going to preserve some things entirely and I'm going to cut some things that's actually the beginning of a productive exchange now the question is what for both sides and let's get the public on board to accept that there's some things we take for granted now we're not going to have there's some costs we're not now paying that we're going to have to pay it's necessary to preserve our country I understand that but I don't know how realistically we make it happen unless there's perhaps a popular movement to require Romney and Obama to meet every week for six weeks before the election on debate terms not of the parties choosing but of some independent group like we used to have with the League of Women voters that requires tests probe expects and demands that they answer these questions I think the debate structure is the possibility is the place where we've got the possibility of a solution I would like to see a proposal that Harvard floated a number of years ago that we devote Sunday nights from the beginning of the general election period through

the election to intensive discussions with presidential candidates about the serious issues of the day I think you'd find an attend of audience for that and I think the person who's elected would find that he was better able to govern if the public had had that opportunity the public isn't stupid the public actually is smart in some important ways but it needs help in getting up to speed are we close to the legitimizing the American political system is it possible we can reach a point in a political system where it collapses of its own absurdity we're close right now to can having a campaign run on attack and irrelevant arguments that are highly deceptive and as a result make it extremely difficult to solve the problems facing the country which is why all the concern about money and politics is well justified and why we ought to worry about trying to vigilantly hold super PACs and the third party advertisers are accountable now what are the consequences of high level of attack you don't have a reason to vote for someone you're only being

told why to vote against hence no projection of what the alternatives are no understanding of the trade-offs in government and the danger is with all of this unaccountable third party money they're going to have high level of attack you may super PAC money special interest money political party money special interest group money as well as super PAC money where they're going to have high level of attack hence no relevance to governance and votes against and that we're going to have high levels of deception hence people who feel betrayed once they see actual governance or who vote against candidate they might otherwise support we have got to worry about this is an issue and as a result trying to ensure that people understand the facts under the ads critical important that the ads not distract us from the central issues all of this is a journalistic function and important that when there is deception the candidate carries the burden if you'll remember 2000 Al Gore was hurt as a result of the win which he campaigned against Bill Bradley he made some claims that were considered illegitimate by those who were tracking the campaign

he carried that penalty forward and the bush campaign capitalized on it in some ways illegitimately to attack him in the general election what happens when a super PAC deceives the pro-romney super PAC not only outspent the pro-centrum and pro-gongers super PACs it outspent them 20 to one in deceptive dollars those are dollars spent on ads that were deceiving so what happens when that super PAC carries all that deception do we say about governor Romney he deceived and as a result he carries a penalty no we don't and as a result there's no penalty structure put in place to create a structure that dampens down the deception since we last talked the Wesleyan media air project I'm sure you're familiar with that has given us some grim facts about how the campaign advertising dollars are being spent first it says this campaign is shaping up to be an overwhelmingly negative one much more negative than 2008 so far says the Wesleyan project 70% of the ads

are negative talk to me about that what we do know this year is that we've had a high level of attack and that we've had a high level of deception and I separate the two because you can have deception in ads that make the case for a candidate that aren't simply ads that attack and what happens when you have a high level of attack at a high level of deception is that you disassociate campaigning from governance and you minimize the likelihood that the candidate who is elected has made a case for a presidency that he can actually act on and mobilize the American people on behalf of so negative ads are all right if they're true right I don't like to use the word negative because it conflates legitimate and illegitimate attack and because negative to most people means duplicitous it means you're not looking at the ads that make the case for a candidate that may be deceptive but the one of the problems with high levels of attack is that it doesn't give you a basis to vote for a candidate one of the advantages of attack at some level is it creates

legitimate issue distinctions when it's fair and accurate and relevance to governance attack is what makes politics work I'm not going to tell you bad things about me when I'm running you're going to tell voters things that are that are accurate if you're running a good honorable campaign that create a legitimate issue distinction sometimes candidates attack others for things they've actually done themselves and also you're going to make a case that has translates into governance so it gives people some reason to vote for you and against me those contrast ads are actually the strongest form of advertising we have because they tell you on an issue where there's a distinction where I stand where you stand and if that relates to a real decision in governance that helps people vote what your response to these numbers outside groups including super packs have sponsored almost 60 percent of the ads air the compared with 3 percent 3 percent of the ads in 2008 one group alone car roads crossroads GPS has aired nearly 17,000 spots mostly against Obama and all together there've been 33,420 anti-Obama pro-republican spots run compared to 25,516 pro-Obama anti-republican

spots what do you make of that well first third party advertising that's non-candidate advertising has historically been more attacked driven and more deceptive and that's true this year as well secondly when there are imbalances in money tied to messages the side with a higher dollar amount of messaging has the advantage we showed this in 2008 interestingly when the advantage was with the Obama campaign which in some media markets outspent John McCain 4 to 1 we documented the effect of that difference in the presence of controlling everything else that might have affected voters and we showed a difference in vote choice based on the amount of money differential in the amount of money spent by the two campaigns and the biggest problem occurs when there's a differential in spending and a high level of deception tied to a high level of tack because now you have the worst possible consequences the whole electoral environment becomes more attack driven with deceptive

content that might mislead voters into voting against a candidate they might otherwise support and it by divorcing campaigning from governance it invites sentences in the about our political process why after all if when you're told all these things that are deceptive and then you vote and you know as a result see forecast governance should you vote the next time and that's the theory behind the notion that maybe it does demobilize there is some evidence of that so if I have more money than you and I spend more of that money on negative ads and I run more negative ads than you I have the advantage assuming that you've got a comparably effective message yes redundancy is correlated to retention how do beleaguered busy besieged voters sort out the BS from the truth I mean I've I brought with me two ads I want to play side by side one is from Americans for prosperity funded in part by the super rich coke brothers and it attacks President Obama's record-owned energy the other which I'll play right after it is an almost instant

rebuttal from the Obama side and it features someone most people have never seen the deputy campaign manager for Obama's reelection so let me play these two's hands and then we'll talk about them Washington promised to create American jobs if we passed their stimulus but that's not what happened fact billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries the Obama administration admitted the truth that 2.3 billion dollars of tax credits went overseas while millions of Americans can't find a job 1.2 billion dollars to a solar company that's building a plant in Mexico half a billion to an electric car company that created hundreds of jobs in Finland and tens of millions of dollars to build traffic lights in China President Obama wasted 34 billion dollars on risky investments the result failure American taxpayers are

paying to send their own jobs to foreign countries tell President Obama American tax dollars should help American taxpayers and now here's the almost instant rebuttal hi I'm Stephanie Cutter I'm the deputy campaign manager here at Obama for America and I wanted to arm you with the facts about the latest attack from big oil you may have heard of the coke brothers their secretive oil billionaires bankrolling republican campaigns and now they're backing Mitt Romney pretty simple reason for this President Obama would take away billions of dollars in unnecessary oil tax breaks Mitt Romney would protect them so now they're spending 6 million dollars on an ad that is so blatantly false the Washington Post said they have no shame let's get the facts out because it's important that you guys know the truth President Obama's helped create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs projects in all 50 states and the way these oil billionaires in their front group completely ignored the truth is breathtaking let's take some crazy

examples from their attack at they claim the administration gave money to build electric cars in Finland no the Department of Energy funding was specifically for US jobs at US facilities sure enough the company's employing 700 workers in California and they're planning to build a plant in Delaware okay another ridiculous claim they said we sent money to China to build traffic lights that's wrong again those traffic lights were assembled here in this country and help expand our light manufacturing industry in this country they said we gave money to a company building solar plants in Mexico nope wrong again our money is going to build a solar plant here in America with American workers these guys are going to say whatever it takes to tear down the president they will literally say anything they oppose expanding clean energy they oppose higher fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks so we're going to call their BS when we see it and we need your help to call them on it too and to set the records straight so share this tweet it Facebook it I keep hearing about Tumblr and whatever that is please use that too and thank you for all of your help to totally different kind of ads once slick highly produced

all that music and sound bites and the and the drama of it the other and just straight forward some young woman talking into camera how do you evaluate the techniques there well first the second is a web video and it's consistent with the ways in which the Obama campaign talked to supporters in 2008 very straightforward someone comes on camera and says here's the way we see the facts the produced highly the highly visual very evocative produced content is almost always more effective because it's more memorable the visuals the music and the words underscore each other under both of these however our problematic claims and so if you say I really like Stephanie Cutter she seems really credible I guess I'm going to believe her or I really buy into all this fancy produced content in the third party ad you've you've made a mistake what you need to ask in both is what are the patterns of deception and how can I detect them so let me give you some quick guides the Koch brothers aren't big oil the Koch brothers are a little oil they run all

sorts of things but the percent of their income that comes from oil small compared to big oil she's calling the big oil because you're afraid of big oil big oil is negatively cast and it's much easier to say bad thing big oil and tie it to Koch brothers that to say highly diversified lots of things that they run Koch brothers so first move when somebody uses a single scary something and attaches ask is that right and what does that mean on the other side when people make categorical claims you think it's really plausible so no jobs created by the stimulus that's not plausible everything about economic three would say it must have done something well the CBO congressional budget office says that the stimulus created or saved 1.2 to 3.3 million jobs that's not a small number so tests of plausibility when people make categorical claims they're usually false now I noticed I didn't say always false because that would be a categorical claim then when visuals pop up on the screen as you see words or you hear words ask whether the

visual is driving a false inference you saw salindra pop up on the screen salindra is failed you heard 34 billion and the word failure now you're not it's you're processing rapidly it's going like this in the ad you're not likely to say because you know salindra was a failure that was salindra 34 billion where it was everything else of the 34 billion of failure when you see a visual that's strong and you associate it with something that is accurate ask whether the rest of what you're processing and coming along is misleading you of the rest of that money salindra and a group that I think is called beacon power are the two that have failed we may as a country gets back some money from the bankruptcy but let's assume that we don't we lose all of those loan guarantees if we do it's 2% of the money that's been spent but that piece is not going to let you ask that because it's moving so rapidly you've already processed

the whole thing has failed because salindra is so visible and available and we've heard about it in news and it is legitimately a failure for the Obama administration and we tend to overgeneralize so what's the bottom line with this and there's one more by the way whenever somebody says jobs overseas stop we're in a global economy it's virtually impossible to spend a large amount of money on something major and not have something that's going overseas we've got things that are plants in the United States that are owned by people overseas we've got people in the United States who own things but the plant is overseas and in many of the big products that we assemble automobiles you've got parts coming from all over so did the jobs all go overseas or in a global economy would some of it have gone overseas and some of it come here now once you make that inference you can tell why the democratic response and the ad are both telling you a partial truth some of

that money did create jobs overseas but some of that money created jobs here the ad only tells you have the democratic response only tells you have but since you know the economy is global you know that there's some truth involved is it true by the way that fact checkers forced Mitt Romney to back away from his claim that he had net net increased jobs by a hundred thousand while he was running Bain Capital yes and when people say fact checking doesn't matter here's a case study fact checking often hits a brick wall that is the campaigns believe that they can restate so often with the pocket of ads that they can override it but when it is persistent and when you have debates to personally hold the candidate accountable and when the other candidates are doing it as well it can succeed and that's how the process is supposed to work. Kathleen Hodgson will be seeing how this plays out over the next coming months thanks for joining me. Given the astronomical amounts of money being spent on all those ads and the fog of lies with which they shroud our

awareness and despite the unshakable grip of the very rich in their mercenaries on both our political parties I'm always amazed that there are people out across America who still fight back who don't give up no matter the odds. Case in point my next guest and the powerful union she heads will lead a march fighting back against economic inequality in Chicago on May 18th. The Chicago protest is part of a growing international movement in support of what's called the Robin Hood Tax named after the legendary English outlaw who took from the rich and gave to the poor back in the 13th century. The Robin Hood Tax is a small government levy the financial sector would pay on commercial transactions like stocks and bonds supporters say it's a tiny tax to clean up the mess the banks help create the money generated could be used for social programs and job creation as the idea has spread around the world it's been estimated that a Robin Hood Tax could raise as

much as 77 billion dollars in the European Union countries and 350 billion dollars a year here in the U.S. The movement has been embraced by Germany's Angela Merkel, Pope Benedict, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. It's momentum has been bolstered by a savvy media campaign that ranges from slapstick to slickly produced videos. Have you had this idea about the Robin Hood Bankest Tax? Yes it's a sweet little idea taxing the banks to help the poor but I don't think it'll work it's very complicated and will be very tough on the banking sector which has just been given billions of pounds of tax pay as money to keep it going well yeah of course very minimum tax could amount to at least 350 billion dollars that can go back to our communities that can go back to jobs that can go back and help cash here in the U.S. leading the charge in support of the

tax is Roseanne DeMoral and the organization she leads national nurses united it's the largest registered nurses union in U.S. history and with nearly 170,000 members it's one of the country's fastest growing unions in recent years the nurses stayed some of the most organized and best publicized campaigns for health care reform now they're doing the same for the Robin Hood Tax with a fight they called the Main Street Campaign events already have been held in Washington and on Wall Street you're in New York the May 18th March in Chicago originally was planned to coincide with the G8 summit of the world's most powerful nations president Obama then decided to move that meeting to camp David so intentionally or not you'll be dodging a confrontation with Roseanne DeMoral and her nurses Roseanne welcome thank you Bill it's so nice to be here when you went to your membership and said I want us to get involved in taking on Wall Street I won't

us to fight for the financial transaction tax did they scratch their head and say what the devil is that you know what Bill it was the most fascinating thing they got that in a heartbeat the people who have billions of dollars who can make a million dollars an hour which is you know Wall Street need to give a little bit back it's very Americans happened before it's not anything novel and the nurses know that they pay tax so when we explained it they completely got it we did a lot of education around it and then we found out into the capital we had a thousand nurses in Washington to see last year and we are the 99 percent we introduce a financial transaction tax you know there's some sophisticated things about the financial transaction tax but frankly all you need to know is that people in this economy are hurting they're losing their homes they have no health care they've lost their jobs something's wrong and everyone knows it and when you look around and you see the billions of dollars and the billionaires and the excessive wealth

that's been taken out of the economy everyone knows that they don't necessarily know how to speak about derivatives or stocks or all of that but they know that those people who have those things have the money so when we went to the capital two stories I'll relay very quickly one of the young nurses it goes into one of the legislators offices and says you know we want a financial transaction tax and this male legislator says will you nurses know a lot about financial transactions like you know what would a nurse know or what would a woman know you nurses need to lower your expectations and she said would you like me to say that to you when I'm prepping you for surgery and it says the story right there right because ultimately we're talking about the life and death of people that's what the nurses see they see life and death and so it's that same body that's presenting themselves to the nurse on that operating table those nurses see those patients in droves every single day and they see people without hope and they see fundamental despair another nurse told one of the legislators I don't know a lot about the financial transaction

tax but I know I pay tax on everything I buy as a working person and they should too and that's it they have been able to essentially the the people in the financial industry have been able to ultimately take so much money out of the economy and not even have to pay a minimum sales tax on that not even a minimum so how did these two kind of some very very cynically very cynically yeah what happened was so then the nurses came back together told the stories and of course that enraged everyone because that's the same experience they had in all the offices dismissive our legislators have found that they can be dismissive because labor doesn't have anywhere to go so we decided to take the campaign to establish a mainstream campaign to take it back to the communities and talk to real people who are losing their homes jobs and health care and say there is an option we can all get together we can fight for a financial transaction tax this tax we used to have a financial transaction tax in this country from 1914 to 1966 then in 1987 at the time of the another Wall Street crash the first president Bush and Senator Bob Dole a Republican

and several other Republicans call for restoring it didn't happen no and there's even a financial transaction tax in the SEC right now I'm a small one there's a small there's one in New York City as well I mean so financial transaction tax you know has been here there are many critics of the financial transaction tax they say among other things that the banks will simply pass the cost on to the consumer they say that the banks will in order if they have fewer trades we'll let people go there be unemployment on Wall Street they say that the banks will flee they'll go abroad they'll go somewhere else with their business has happened once when Sweden had a financial transaction tax and lost a lot of trading activity they say you're killing the goose that laid the golden egg I'm waiting to see the golden egg the truth of the matter is you can fix the flea with regulation and with policy that's an easy fix in terms of jobs there are very few jobs actually that the financial sector hits computerized industry nanosecond trading and it's very

concentrated and that's part of their beauty part of their scheme right it's basically they've created an economy unto themselves without people and the problem is they're lobbyist and the credible amount of money they have by and sell our legislature they've got enormous amounts of money but we can win this because we have the people with us so is the campaign for financial transaction tax largely leverage your seeking just a means of getting the attention of the powers that be are you serious about getting this three out and fifty billion dollars from a fifty cent tax on every one hundred dollars of credit oh we're as serious as a heart attack and I can tell you that if you were going to fund social services we assume we need about what five hundred billion to kind of jumpstart a jobs program there aren't real jobs left in America we need real jobs and we need health care I mean all of the things that we should have as a society but here's what you're up against first of all they're not going to take you seriously because you are

nurses what a nurse is doing about Wall Street secondly they're going to say that you know they'll the banks will find a way to circumvent this tax pass it on to the consumers isn't that amazing isn't it amazing how bad our thinking is in this country that people who have billions of dollars Wall Street that they shouldn't have to pay fifty cents on a hundred dollar of trade I mean that's just it shows how far we've a field we've come from where we need to be as a society because otherwise what we're going to be is you know have this kind of industrial peasantry in this country and I mean that's where this could go if something doesn't change pretty dramatically what I can understand is why our legislators they know there's a problem I don't know what they think how they think we're going to solve the problem you know there's a deficit created by speculation and all of sudden working people are supposed to pay for the deficit that's the rallying cry like a deficit that working people didn't cause that that's the priority of this country to resolve a deficit caused by Wall Street rather than job creation but you don't I don't know anyone who understands

the castle better than from the battering ram side than you you've been out there with a battering ram for a long time trying to change Washington is virtually an impossible task because of the entrenched systemic corruption I wish the town now runs absolutely the current way we practice politics we are headed for devastation I would agree with that the only way we can do that is by changing ourselves I'm very tired of all of us being disappointed in Democrats I mean okay how many more Democrats can we be disappointed and we have got to change ourselves we have got to actually that's why I like the Occupy movement and hoping that it you know moves with structure and reform and I'd say you know kind of non-reformist reforms like the financial transaction tax because what that does is it starts having a different view on speculation and what's a responsibility to society but Occupy is extremely important to us because it actually doesn't buy into the fact that we're all in this together we have been in this and all we're all in this

together bubble fantasy for so long I mean you know and everything what we've been supposed to be things were supposed to trickle down and then all of a sudden we were supposed to be part of some bubble up and I mean it's just it's everything's trickling but it's trickling up but suppose you get the $350 billion what if it's been on bombing Iran? Well precisely we're not you're marking the money we're not saying okay we want $350 billion and this part should go to health care and this part should good education what we're saying is that in part of the process of obtaining the financial transaction taxes the movement itself because if we can engage people to actually engage the legislators I mean we have to continually hold them accountable we can never give our power away and we can never buy into the lies that have been told to us for so long I mean I don't even recognize you know liberals anymore I don't even they will invariably be apologetic for anything that comes down we're taught in health care reform liberals we want single-payer we absolutely want single-payer and then suddenly single-payer was off the table even

the president said at one point in time he supported a single-payer system boy you do never hear those words anymore then everyone said okay well you know we're drawing the line on the public option we will never ever compromise off the public option all some public options got and then it came to an individual mandate we will never agree to tax you know workers benefits will never agree to tax our our health care benefits and all of a sudden liberals are rallying around taxing health care benefits it's like how low can you go so I have for myself and hopefully for a lot of other people I'm looking at a stage now for absolute so they're they've got absolute absolutes and there's a game of compromise you're looking for absolutely you know we've made the compromises look where these compromises have got us do I think that there's an absolute right for people to have health care in this country absolutely absolutely do I think people are entitled to work and and provide for themselves and their families absolutely that's an absolute

do I think that people should have a home to live in and to be able to care for the most vulnerable absolutely yes I'm looking for absolutes I'm not interested in the neoliberal agenda I'm not interested in bipartisanship I'm interested in social change that actually puts society back with the people we have to start all over in terms of how we do politics right now we have to get we have to engage people in their communities to actually elect the people and tell those people what we want and tell them we will unelect them if they don't fulfill the needs of their community now you're talking about a mass movement I'm talking about an absolute message because after the election we both know that after the election no matter how the voters have expressed themselves it's the donors who decide what the income much do when they get into office we know that invariably what happens is the groups are called into the White House and they're told no and then they come back and they tell the coalition no and then everyone's cutting side deals and

there's no actual social movement what I like about Occupy is that a lot of groups try to co-opt it and it's stayed its own course and we've got to have we've got to have Occupy with a political you know strategic decisions that are actually going to push the agenda for the American people revolt is a good one because ultimately revolt gets a lot of attention but we also have to be on the demand side and we've got to be able to reach everyday people who are actually out there struggling and and give them hope the paradox was and is that is that you're calling for more public action that's for more public policy for more government at a time when there's a growing powerful conservative movement that says government is the problem we want to have the corollary to that on the other side where we're actually inspiring people toward a better vision for society for hope for a social movement that they can engage in that's not the politics of hatred that's not the politics of fear but the politics of hope now to do that we are going

to tap the anger because people should be angry so we want to validate the anger but not take it in a reactionary way but a way that's actually life affirming have you had any indirect or direct response from the White House to your campaign for the financial transaction tax we have from the White House precisely what I can say from the White House in all honesty we have what the legislators precisely what happened to us in single pair we had the financial transaction tax we talked to the author of the bill who'd done it twice before in in congress and asked him to reintroduce it again and said that we would build we're going to build a movement around it he said great you know wonderful and all of a sudden they came up with this tiny transaction tax which is effectively not much for deficit reduction earmark for deficit reduction and so we were just astounded and so what they told us this was the same thing this is the same speech of you nurses need to lower your expectations well we have to introduce the concept first well the concept first while is there it has been introduced in America we headed historically in America as you pointed

out we have it in New York we have it in the SEC we don't need the concept we have the concept well we need is the money to jumpstart this economy but I think what they want to do is to make sure that they're assuring Wall Street that it won't actually hurt the same thing as as what's happened in health care reform I ask this next question knowing that within the the world of labor leadership you have your own politics yes the AF of LCIO just recently endorsed Barack Obama for reelection you're on the executive committee of the AF of LCIO did you vote for endorsing no I didn't go to the meeting why we haven't taken a position on Barack Obama our nurses were so hard the last time on his campaign they worked for months I mean people left their homes they were excited you know they've actually believed in his candidacy they thought that he met what he said when he actually supported single pair now we needed to do is getting there but we made a tremendous mistake I mean as a country as the nurses everyone and that is he said you need to

push me well no one pushed him except for the right and except for Wall Street we didn't push Barack Obama in fact we had the liberal groups who were yelling at anyone who stepped out of line to get in line so now we're in a situation that we in part to help create that's the dilemma here you can't solve the problem without changing the way you do your own work and so this isn't about Barack Obama we are in a process of figuring out if we're even going to endorse legislators this year because it's so bad but let me tell you what some of your liberal and progressive allies in Washington are saying look me in the eye they say and tell me that you're going to stand by with 170,000 powerful fighters out there for social justice and see Romney replace Barack Obama that's what they're saying and say that and that's that's a reality that's the politics of today and so I for us you know whether or not we endorse Barack Obama or whomever is

pretty much irrelevant I don't I yes it's true we're an activist organization we have phenomenal amount of power we have disproportionate amount of power relative to where we are because it's not just our members we have you know we have millions of nurses who relate to us organizationally it is it's a tough union oh god you in fact I watched with incredulous eyes when you actually took on Schwarzenegger very popular Republican celebrity governor and you helped bring him down we did we did actually you know his his waterloo was when he said in front of the woman's conference I kicked nurses but we know attention to this voice is over there by the way does it the special interests if you know what I mean okay the special interests just don't like me in Sacramento because I'm always kicking the butt that's why they don't like me well we put that shoe on the other foot and we why did he say that because well first of all because he's Arnold Schwarzenegger he was above it all but again again the way we practice politics he became governor everyone

thought it was more important to get his autographed than to actually hold him accountable for any policy and so what happened was he decided to the nurses have patient ratios in California which is a phenomenal law he decided to attempt to roll that back and then he wanted to meet with us and we said no you know leave that legislation alone or we're not meeting with you well he attempted to roll it back we set out on a campaign and I'll tell you we saw his we took his popularity from up here to down here and he never regained his popularity again he was so shocked and off of his game that he thought that you know he could just be dismissive of just about everyone he was Hollywood he was a governor he was above it all and he was a terminator he was the terminator he was the terminator but you know what it shows you the power of these nurses it right there right there it tells you how much power they actually have when a nurse speaks the legislators know that a nurse can be a very scary person and for Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California legislators certainly know that when Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to take on

the nurses I swear the legislators were like oh my god I don't want to put you on the spot but no I do want to put you on the spot why doesn't all of organized labor have that today you know I know that organized labor has been anemic it's been on the fire of course for 30 years have been a strong conservative business campaign to make them impotent in our society and they've largely succeeded but there's a pathology in the union movement that has contributed to its own anemic what is it what's happening you know I think it's class shame the you know in the last 30 years everyone was supposed to be middle class working class was a bad thing to be from the working class was you know no one was from the even labor uses that you know you're working families they don't say the working class and they don't say working people they say everyone says middle class or working families and you're supposed to have disdain for the working class they bought into the paradigm to where they became vulnerable to middle class consultants who

redefined what they were supposed to be so I had one of the major labor leaders who has since left come to me when they 12 years ago or so and say we went through this consultant training and oh you could learn so much from it and he said the thing that you could learn the most is non-confrontational language and I thought well why in the hell would I want to do that you know I mean not be confrontational there are people out there who are trying to harm my members working people poor people and I don't want to confront them of course I want to confront them what it told me was that fighting became actually defined as something that was pathological and the labor movement bought in and why in the world the labor movement would buy in I don't know do you have assuming you will retire one day do you have a bucket list of what you'd like to accomplish before you retire yes and it has things that are fundamental and things that we've been working on all of our lives and that is a just society health care for all taking money out of politics of course

jobs good-of-paying jobs in America pride in being an American although I will say that we're working on the global scene and the opportunities to actually have one world and one people and even though that sounds pie in the sky I'm representing itself in a way for the first time that I've seen in my life because the financial transaction tax is seen by all of our allies internationally as a way of addressing the economy of the world and that's why it's just and it's not the financial transaction tax in and of itself it's a reconceptualization of what we should be as a society as a people I am really sick of the people who are apologists for finance from my perspective and it may sound simplistic but working people built this country and you know what Bill if we have to we can build it again I can see you're going to have to postpone your retirement for those how long well you can be my role model thank you Rose Endomora for being with me. Thank you so much. Joining Rose Endomora and the nurses at the Chicago March and rally

on May 10th will be the rock star activist Tom Morello who just happens to be my guest on next week's edition of Moyers and Company Tom Morello came to fame 20 years ago as the lead guitarist in rage against the machine some of you will know rage as one of the most successful and political rock bands of the 90s and one of the most controversial when the group disbanded Tom Morello became a one-man revolution a troubadour singing songs of protest across the land from the steps of the Wisconsin State Capitol this land is your land to occupy Wall Street wherever you look you'll be there my job is to steal the backbone of people are on the front lines of social justice

struggles and to put wind in the sales of those struggles and people are fighting on a daily on a daily basis at a grassroots level that's next week's broadcast on our website bill warriors dot com you'll see a new feature called what we're reading news stories and analysis from the internet and take a look at our campaign ad watch page there is information tools and links to help you in the fight to make campaign ads honest and the dark money behind them transparent and remember you're always welcome to become one of our Facebook friends that's it for now see you next time don't wait a week to get more moyers visit bill moyers dot com for exclusive blogs essays and video features this episode of moyers and company is available on DVD for 1995

to order call 1-800-336-1917 or write to the address on your screen funding is provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York celebrating 100 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world the colbergh foundation independent production fund with support from the partridge foundation a john and polygoth charitable fund the clements foundation park foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues the herbalper foundation supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society the Bernard and Audrey rapaport foundation the john D and Catherine team a Carthor foundation committed to building a more just burden and peaceful world more information at macfound dot org and gummelwitz the Betsy and Jesse Fink foundation

the hk h foundation barbra g freshman and by our sole corporate sponsor mutual of america designing customized individual and group retirement products that's why we're your retirement company you