Antonia Juhasz

Antonia appears live from New Orleans on MSNBC’s Up! with Chris Hayes discussing her new investigation into the ongoing health crisis in the Gulf and the two year anniversary of the BP oil spill.

Watch video here.

GUESTS

Melissa Harris-Perry
Christine Todd Whitman
Sam Seder
Paul Douglas
Bob Herbert
Victoria DeFrancesco Sotto
Antonia Juhasz
Josh Barro

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC ANCHOR: Good morning from New York. I’m Chris Hayes.

The U.N. today is expected to vote on whether to send as many as 300 unarmed military observers to Syria amid concerns from the U.S. and other countries that Syria is not fully observing the ceasefire there.

And the total of six secret service agents have now resigned in the Colombian prostitution scandal. Senator Chuck Grassley fresh from calling the president stupid is now calling based on what it is not clear for the hotel records of White House staff to be checked as well.

And we’re going to talk today about the back and forth this week between President Obama and Mitt Romney over Romney’s privileged upbringing, but I want to start with my “Story of the Week.” The meaning of green. Tomorrow is Earth Day. As you can probably tell, if you saw the pulsing green peacock on MSNBC this week, this is “Green is Universal” week here at our parent company.

The idea behind “Green Is Universal” aside from being a fairly depth
exercise and branding is that environmentalism isn’t scary or abstract but rather easy, personal and digestible. And given how daunting the facts are about climate change, how monumental our environmental challenges seem, there’s really something to be said in breaking it down into small, discreet changes in our behavior.

Hence, the one small thing aspect of the campaign which offers visitors to the “Green is Universal” website, a menu of small things like purchase clothing made from organic cotton, power down by computer or carpool to work one day a week. Now, “Green is Universal” isn’t the first or last campaign corporation lifestyle magazine or cultural outlet to conflate personal consumption choices with environmental salvation.

But to the extent, these campaigns further a mindset that allows to us think we can dispatch our responsibility to heal the planet through an abbreviated shower or a slightly lower thermostat that can have actually insidious effect, because here is the unpleasant though necessary truth, we cannot mitigate climate change through individual action or moral suasion.

It is fundamentally a collective action problem. The most profound tragedy of the comments in the history of human life on the planet and the only ultimate solution requires collective action by way of government intervention and regulation. That said, there is a core truth that one small thing does capture.

There is no single silver bullet solution to climate change. Climate change is a very big problem, but luckily, for us, it’s a big problem that can be broken down into small and more manageable ones. Princeton researchers, Robert Socolow and Steve Pacala have formalizes idea with what they call climate wedges.

They start here in 1957 and show how carbon emissions rose to an estimated eight billion metric tons by the year 2007. They project that by 2057, mid-century, if we continue business as usual, emissions will be up here at 16 billion metric tons a carbon a year which would raise the world’s temperature by an estimated nine degrees.

Basically, game over for the planet. Now, this is where researchers, Socolow and Pacala, say we need to get to do avert catastrophic disaster. This is the flat path to keeping our planet, at least, closer to the status quo. And that triangle there, the space between our projected path if we continue business as usual and where we need to be to keep things the way they are now is what they call the stabilization triangle.

The stabilization triangle is crucially important to understand because it represents the big problem that we need to break up into smaller, manageable ones. Within this triangle, our eight wedges, eight things we need to do immediately to keep things from spiraling out of control over the next 50 years. Each of these wedges is a big deal.

For instance, doubling average fuel efficiency, that’s one wedge, or reducing the number of average miles traveled per car, per year from 10,000 to 5,000. That’s one part of the wedge. Or increasing our current solar capacity by 700 times, that’s another wedge, but if these seem totally daunting, there are things that can be done closer to home at the state and local levels as well.

California, for example, started requiring more energy efficient buildings and appliances back in the 1970s and now produces 10 percent less greenhouse gas emissions per person than in 1990. This week, New York City announced its soliciting bids to top the former fresh kills land field site on Staten Island with a wind farm or solar panels. All these efforts start to add up.

For instance, wind power in American increased temple (ph) during this past decade, which you can see on this map here. And increasing wind power capacity by 25 times is one of the climate wedges. There are even ways to think creatively about these wedges that don’t depend on the legislative process.

The solar electric light fund, wires villages and developing world without access to electricity with solar panels putting them on a trajectory of development and empowerment not relying on the polluting and expensive diesel generators. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, volunteers for the home energy efficiency team are organizing monthly barn raising retrofits for homes there.

And a new start-up called rewire is seeking to use the online organizing techniques perfected by move on and the Obama campaign to help solar power spread virally, because if we’re going to get to 700 times current capacity, it will require a social and cultural shift not unlike what happened with Facebook or the Arab spring on Twitter.

All of this requires us to work with each other, to work collectively and not alone. Individual consumer choices must change in the aggregate but getting the scale of change requires us to engage with each other, not just with our own cotton shirts or shorter showers. It requires us to be citizens and not just consumers.

Avoiding climate disaster will require not just one small thing but many small things and many large things and many things in between.

Joining me today, we have former Bush EPA administrator and New Jersey governor, Christine Todd Whitman, author of “It’s My Party To The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America ” and co-chair of the Republican National Leadership Counsel.

Sam Seder is on the program, hosts the “Majority Report” at Majority.FM and co-host of the “Ring of Fire” radio show. Victoria DeFrancesco Sotto, communications director for the group Latino Decisions and a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, Austin, and legendary former “New York Times” columnist —

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: — author of the book “Promises Betrayed: Waking up from the American Dream,” also now as the think-tank Demos. It’s great to have you all here. So, let’s talk about climate, which is probably my favorite topic, because I think before we can get to — right now, I think that here’s the problem, right? If you cover politics, you recognize that there’s nothing going to happen in the Senate legislatively, just as a descriptive matter of where we are politically.

At the same time, you know, the planet doesn’t care about filibuster. I mean, the carbon is still going into the air, and the science is the science, which produces panic, I think, in me, and just a feeling that we’re, what do we do? And so, trying to think of ways that we can do things that aren’t happening at the level of legislation.

Governor, I wanted to talk to you, because you are someone who believes in the science, scientific consensus on global warming. You’re part of a party that has turned away, I think it’s fair to say, the center of gravity in the party has gone in reverse. I mean, it wasn’t controversial, I think, within, among a lot of Republicans ten years ago and it now is controversial.

Can you talk me through a little bit about why that has been the case? I really want to understand this.

CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN, FMR. EPA ADMINISTRATOR: I wish I knew. You know, because frankly, environmentalism is Republican. We started basically the national parks. The first land set aside was Abraham Lincoln who set aside Yosemite. But, fast forward, it was Richard Nixon who established the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act, the clean water act, safe drinking water act, all those things, and those were added to by Bush 41 and Reagan, and it’s continued through it.

Why we suddenly have gotten to this point? It’s endemic of what’s happened to us overall, which is every issue is looked at through the partisan political prism rather than the policy prism. It’s not about how do I solve the problem, it’s can I get another vote in caucus or is this going to enhance my ability to get another percentage point, and this all goes to government regulation, and big government getting into your backyard.

HAYES: Right.

WHITMAN: And that’s where it started to fall apart for Republicans.

HAYES: Well, it’s interesting that something you just said I want to dig in on, because you said it goes to partisanship, and part of what it seems to me is, if liberals aren’t for something, then reflexively, conservatives feel like, either skeptical of it, suspicious of it, or that they must be against it.

And so, what’s happened with climate change and just the basic, you know, vision of it was like, well, Al Gore made this movie err go this movie —

WHITMAN: Well, it’s a little bit of that, and I will also say, I think, the environmentalists bear a little responsibility here because we’ve been too flip. Environmentalists have been too flip. First of all, you say, humans cause climate change. Well, no. Come on. The earth has been changing. The climate has been changing since the Earth was formed.

We had an ice age that went away. We didn’t around to mess it up. So, to just say humans cause it gives skeptics a huge opening. And, of course, we went through the long period of time where we called it global warming. And then, when you have, as we did not this last winter but the winter before, one of our coldest winter with no snow, again, it gives skeptics a wide open.

And that’s what happening over time. It’s changed. So, by trying to stake these absolutes and making it seem as if the world’s going to end tomorrow because of it, we have, in fact, fed into that kind of thinking, fed into those who don’t want to take any action because they see it as a zero sum game. You’re going to lose economic —

HAYES: Sam, you are skeptical of that?

SAM SEDER, MAJORITY.FM: I am a little skeptical about it, because I think, you know, the idea that you’re going to deny the preponderance of scientific information based upon you don’t like the attitude of the people who are arguing on the other side, I mean what we’ve seen over the past 30 years is conservative, self-identified conservatives.

The most educated conservatives have actually lost their faith in science. It’s almost fallen off a cliff if you look at a graph. And I think it’s either beyond the fact of the sheer partisanship. I don’t think it’s just the question of we’re going to oppose this because liberals are in favor of it or in some way — I think that there has been a concerted effort by the conservative movement in this country to delegitimize science and delegitimize the idea that society and government can band together to actually do something.

WHITMAN: Well, I don’t totally disagree with you, but I will say that part of that comes because we have made broad statements that sort of take care of all the problems if that lumps everything together.

SEDER: This pre-dates the idea of Al Gore and inconvenient truth and –

WHITMAN: It’s been coming for some time.

SEDER: Well — but I think what we’re seeing is, you see the – the distrust in science actually pre-date a lot of the arguments that are popularly made about global warming or global climate change. And so, it’s very hard to attribute it to the flipness of the argument, because you know, there’s a lot of arguments that are flip and people don’t just —

WHITMAN: That’s right.

(CROSSTALK)

SEDER: I don’t like it.

WHITMAN: That’s exacerbated it, but I will say it does go back. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency back in the 1990s had a finding on a chemical that was used in apples that they said was a potential carcinogen, so they banned it.

Nearly put the apple business in Washington State out of business entirely, only to discover a year later that, in fact, it wasn’t a potential carcinogen. So, again, the people who say —

SEDER: Government and people are aware of that.

WHITMAN: And that feeds the chatter in the background that starts to lead to building up this skepticism.

HAYES: Well, it also seems to me that we’re eliding a huge factor in this, which is that the most profitable corporations in the history of human civilization on the planet ever have an incredible stake in continuing to put carbon into the air.

In fact, the entire extraction industry of fossil fuels, BP made $26 billion in profit last year is dependent on the fact that the externality of carbon in the air is not priced into their method, right, and is zero sum. You mentioned — I want to play this, because I thought this was so revealing.

Senator James Inhofe on Rachel’s program, and he was talking about how he came to be a denier of the scientific consensus on global warming, and listen to how he articulates his own rationale for coming to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JAMES INHOFE, (R) OKLAHOMA: I was actually on your side of this issue when I was chairing that committee when I first heard about this. I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: “It must be true, until I found out what it cost,” which is to say he has reversed engineered his view of the science based on what it will cost to solve it. I want to hear more about Republicans and climate change, and also, what we can do to sort of move toward facts (INAUDIBLE).

I want to brainstorm my guests with a Republican weatherman and what he has to say about global warming. We’ll find out right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: All right. Right now, I want to bring in Paul Douglas, a meteorologist from Minnesota and the founder of weather nation TV, a new 24-hour channel for weather. Paul, thanks for joining us.

PAUL DOUGLAS, CEO, BROADCAST WEATHER: GOOD to be with you, Chris. Good morning.

HAYES: You look like you’re like in a space command center from some dystopic sci-fi novel in which you have like your finger poised over the button that’s going to nuke the world.

DOUGLAS: That’s right. Be careful what you say —

(LAUGHTER)

HAYES: Paul, you bring us some great stuff on this about the fact that you’re a Republican, you’re a believer in small government, but you’re also a meteorologist, and your ideological disposition doesn’t have any effect on whether the physics, on what the Earth is doing climate wise. How much traction have you gotten with fellow Republicans in trying to sort of take that argument and talk to people about this?

DOUGLAS: I feel like I’m swimming upstream. But that said, we seem to hear from the far right. I think the what I call the common sense moderate middle has been largely silent, and I still think that most Democrats, most Republicans are somewhere in the middle of that bell curve and still respond to logic, still respond to reason, still respond to sound science. And I hope at some point, we get back on track.

My fear is that it may take a couple of climate calamities. What happened in Europe, 2003, with 30,000 people dead, is it going to take that kind of weather disaster for Congress to finally get on track and start coming up with solutions? I’m an optimist, but, Chris, I’m just responding to the data. I was skeptical in the 1980s when James Hansen (ph) was testifying before Congress with NASA.

But just looking at the data, we’ve had a steady accumulation of coincidences, and I tell people, the climate is a puzzle. And the paradox is, by the time the last piece of that puzzle falls into place, it’s going to be too late to do anything about it. There’s enough evidence today for people that have their eyes wide open and are truly looking at the data to make informed decisions.

HAYES: You brought up calamity, because I am increasingly of the idea that that’s some exogenous (ph) event is the only way to force the political system to respond, unfortunately. And, one of the things that we really puzzle with, and I want your advice as an actual verifiable expert, in our editorial meetings, we really don’t want to commit the fallacy of equating weather and climate, right?

Because there was a lot of that like when the winter was cold, Fox News was like, you know, showing the fact, oh, it’s snowing in front of the White House. Obviously, global warming isn’t happening. At the same time, at a certain point, these data points do add up. I mean, the “Boston Marathon,” which has run this week was the second hottest on record.

The marathon organizers had to send an e-mail out to the runners basically saying don’t consider this a race. Just take it easy, because you will be in danger if you — and we had 15,000 record highs in March. How should I talk about this in a way that is scientifically responsible?

DOUGLAS: I think what you can say is that we’ve entered weather — I’d say it’s weather too dot (ph) over us. I mean, this is a new regime. The weather on steroids analogy. You know, would Barry Bonds have been able to hit 762 homeruns without the alleged steroid use? Maybe. But it increased his base state.

HAYES: Right. It increased the possibility that every time he was up to bat, he would hit one out of the ballpark, and so, it is now with the weather. You know, we’re two degrees warmer. Northern latitude’s five, six, seven degrees warmer. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, and that increases the potential for extreme weather, floods, extremes — dry areas are getting drier.

Wet areas are getting wetter. It’s this new weather on steroids. I tell people it’s like Mother Nature has a remote control or a DVR, and she’s putting our seasons on fast forward and turning the volume of severe weather up to an 11. It’s always been at about a five, but now, we’re at an l1.

And I’m seeing things on the weather map, Chris, that in my 35 years tracking the weather, I never ever thought I would see. And at some point, a sane, rational person looks at this drip, drip of evidence and says, something has to be going on. It is not your grandfather’s weather anymore. I’m an optimist.

We’ll figure out solutions, mostly market-based solutions, but government needs to set the bar and then get the heck out of the way and let the markets figure out what’s going to happen. You know what’s going to happen, Chris? Smart companies are going to look at the liabilities involved, and they’re going to look at the opportunities, and they’re already on the right track.

HAYES: Right.

DOUGLAS: In spite of government inaction, in spite of no clear vision at the top, the smart companies, including insurance companies, the military, the navy. Look at what the navy is doing to wean themselves off oil. It’s already happening. And when my Republican colleagues and friends, I hope I still have a few friends —

(LAUGHTER)

DOUGLAS: — realize that there’s plenty on the table for the Chinese and the Europeans and the Asians where there is no debate about climate science, when they realize they’re leaving money behind, that’s when they’re going to get with the program.

HAYES: Christine, you had something —

WHITMAN: Well, I was just going to say that one of the interesting things, it was Ronald Reagan who made climate change a regular part of the National Security Council discussions. I mean, he recognized that this was something that was going to impact the way we deploy our navy, the way we have to respond to international crises around the world that this was something that we couldn’t afford to ignore.

And yet, we hear that it’s Republicans that hate climate, and I would agree with what Paul was saying is that it’s the — more extreme conservative elements that there —

HAYES: But polling shows that it is also the majority of Republicans. I mean, there’s been polling on this. I want to read this very quickly because you brought up the Pentagon. This is a Pentagon report. This is their quadrennial defense review, which is the way they do long-term strategic planning in four-year chunks (ph).

They say, “Climate change and energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in shaping the future security environment. While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.”

BOB HERBERT, DEMOS.ORG: Well, I think you made the essential point when you, you know, follow the money, you know? So, you have this energy industry that is so invested in the whole issue, but I think, you know, I don’t think we’re going to get the Republicans to change. I don’t think the conservatives are going to change on this issue, and it is fundamentally an economic issue on that side, but I think the other side has not done a good job.

I think again and again, whether it’s environmentalists or liberals of whatever stripe, have not fought back hard enough against the organized right in this country. And so, we need more creative, more aggressive efforts to make it clear to the public that climate change is a real problem.

HAYES: I think I disagree with that, and part of the reason I wanted to have Paul Douglas is on and you Christine is, I literally want to – I just want to hang out and brainstorm with you guys like what can we do? What can I do on my liberal television program to make it —

HERBERT: Try and explain — try and explain — try and explain what is happening to human beings and to the planet, because of the policies of people who are doing things before the almighty dollar. Make that clear.

HAYES: Paul, I want you to weigh in, Victoria you as well, right after we take this quick commercial break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: All right. We begin ourselves about 30 minutes to solve the climate problem.

(LAUGHTER)

HAYES: I think we’re making excellent progress. Pretty close. Just around the bend. Victoria, you wanted to weigh in.

VICTORIA DEFRANCESCO SOTTO, LATINO DECISIONS: Yes. One factor we haven’t been discussing is the role of corporations and the public relations blitz that they have put forward.

So, yes, there is your camp of avid deniers, but there’s also that camp that is in the middle, but they’re barraged by BP, by clean coal, and they keep seeing these advertisements, and they’re warm and they’re fuzzy and they start to think, there’s no problem here. There’s no problem with the climate.

HAYES: Or, even more than that, I think one of the things is that it transmits the message that actually we’re already diversifying our energy sources, right? We’re already — all sorts of green energy. The fact is we’ve — over the last decade, we’ve been more and more reliant on coal. I mean, the coal —

SOTTO: Actually, that’s going down.

HAYES: Now, it’s going down. Right.

SOTTO: Below 50.

HAYES: Exactly. It’s no now below 50, and part of that actually is because there’s a substitution effect of natural gas which is very cheap and so — in fact, I think this year, there are no new coal-fired power plants that are supposed to come online this year, which is, you know, the progress.

HERBERT: What is the counter to that, except for a program like this. The public doesn’t hear much about climate change. They don’t hear much about global warming. You have to be really aggressive in making your point.

That’s why we don’t have a draft now, because there were all this — there was this rising up against the draft during Vietnam, and we don’t have a draft anymore. There should be a rising up on climate change.

HAYES: That’s interesting —

HERBERT: And a number of other issues.

HAYES: I think that’s a good parallel, because what happened with the draft was it forced everybody to pay attention to the war in a way that they couldn’t outsource it. Right? And the problem here is that we can outsource this discussion. I want to show a graph of coverage on the Sunday shows, a climate coverage on ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox.

And that’s climate change covered on Sunday’s shows over the last three years. And here’s John Kerry talking about how he can’t even gain traction in conversations with his colleagues about the issue. You can’t talk about climate now. People just turn off. It’s extraordinary. Only for national security and jobs will they open their mind, and he said that’s true even among Democrats.

Paul, how do you — one of the problems we face from an editorial perspective is finding news hooks, right, because it’s like, oh, there are more parts per million of carbon in the air on Wednesday. That’s not a headline. How do you sort of introduce — inject it into the conversation?

DOUGLAS: You know, nobody wants to hear bad news, right? I understand that, Chris, and sociologists, psychologists say that most of us won’t accept a problem until there’s a viable solution.

HAYES: Yes.

DOUGLAS: I think that’s part of the problem here is that that we don’t really have that blueprint for moving forward. I wish President Obama, he’s kind of dancing around the edges a little bit, but there’s such an opportunity for him or for Mr. Romney to seize the ball and say you know what? We have carbon resources.

$10 trillion estimated of carbon still in the ground. Let’s mine it. Let’s drill it, but, simultaneously, we’re going to ramp up these new carbon neutral energy options. There’s — as you said, there’s no silver bullet. There is plenty of green buck shot, and we have the entrepreneurs. We have the smart minds in this country, Chris, that can solve this problem, and it’s already starting to happen, but we really need to ramp up faster.

HAYES: I just want to push back briefly and say that that – the approach that you spelled out was precisely the approach they’ve taken in the recovery act and subsequent bill, which is basically say, yes, we can for the price on carbon because even though the Democrats pass it on the house, it was filibustered by the Republicans in the Senate.

The Republican co-sponsor took his name off the bill and off (INAUDIBLE). So, it’s not like — I mean, that was on the agenda. I’ve covered the Henry — Waxman-Markey bill. They were trying to get cap and trade passed.

What they’ve done in the absence of that is basically say, let’s subsidize green energy since we can’t increase the cost of carbon, and the response of that has been scandal mongering about Solyndra and solar power. I mean, it seems like you can’t win.

WHITMAN: Well, one thing I would say from your initial question, how do you present this? Again, I get back to, you’ve got to make it relevant to people. There are times when I think we’ve lost the climate argument, and we ought to just be talking about emissions.

HAYES: That’s interesting.

WHITMAN: We ought to be talking about the greenhouse gases and what they mean. And if you can say that something that is not contagious as an epidemic, and we have an epidemic of asthma in this country. It’s the single largest cause of missed school days to over 10 million missed school days.

That’s very real to people. Every time I go into a school and I ask kids, do they know anybody? Do they have asthma in their family? Do they know — three quarters of the hands go up. And, we don’t know what causes asthma, but we do know that fine particulate matter in the air can exacerbate, can trigger an attack or exacerbate an attack.

And I think we need to find more of those instances where it really gets back to the individual to say, this matters to you. This stuff is dirty. If nothing else, it’s dirty. OK. You don’t want to believe in climate change —

HERBERT: I also think that people don’t understand that these emissions they stay in the atmosphere for centuries, if not millennia. I mean, you know, this is the exhaust from — you know, whatever. It’s just out there. It’s there for your kids, it’s there for your grandchildren,
your great-grandchildren.

SOTTO: But what do you care if you’re unemployed?

(LAUGHTER)

SOTTO: You know, I live in Texas. I live in Austin, and I’ve gone them to talk Texas. It’s easy to sit here and talk about particles, but when there are folks down there — South Texas being the most economically depressed region in the state, and suddenly, there is this shale gas, boom.
There is jobs.

You know, they don’t have enough people to fit the jobs, and the Democrats in Texas are for the shale boom. So, it’s interesting where it’s that trade-off and trying to find out public policy balance where the livelihood of people’s day-to-day is balanced off with air quality.

HAYES: Yes.

SEDER: I still think that the argument, ultimately, because you can’t every day talk about, well, we still have a problem with climate change.

HAYES: Right.

SEDER: It’s the issue, I think, gets back to this notion of government being able to take collective action. I mean, we can talk about it being entrepreneurial, and we talk about it being relevant to the individuals, but every time you try to make it viral to individuals, they look outside their window and they see it snowing. Climate change is not a problem anymore.

So, I think there’s a more fundamental argument that needs to be waged by — by the Democrats or the liberals in this country that government and society can band together to do things. I mean, I think to look back on things like essentially repairing and some respects the ozone layer. I mean, that’s just indicative of what can be done with broader policy.

HAYES: Yes. And one of the things that people always talk about is sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide is SO3, actually, I think it is, right? That was causing acid rain, right? We solved the problem. Right, sulfur dioxide. It was an amazing accomplishment. I mean, they —

WHITMAN: We can do more. We still need to do more, but don’t forget, the states are acting. I mean, the good news, the states really are laboratories of Democracy, and they are acting. I happen to believe that the federal government ever would act on something like carbon on state
(ph) and say, fine, we’ll take that as our base.

But, right now, they’re pushing, and that’s actually a way to get things to happen, because what they’re doing is creating a patchwork quilt of regulations that makes it very difficult for companies to operate.

(CROSSTALK)

SOTTO: I am. Look at Pennsylvania and look at Ohio. They’re pushing for moratoriums for fracking. They’re still not quite there yet, but because they have felt the effects of earthquakes and dirty drinking water.
So, you know, yes, they’re looking out their window and seeing that it’s snowing, but they’re feeling the earth move under them. So, I do think we’re going to see it at a state-by-state level.

HAYES: Paul Douglas, meteorologist and founder of Weather Nation TV, it’s so great to have you on. I want you to come back when you return from the space shuttle that you’re in.

(LAUGHTER)

DOUGLAS: Chris, thank you for what you’re doing, just talking about this subject, keeping it in the public eye. It’s a shame that it takes a major disaster, I think, for people to talk about this, but this is possibly the biggest challenge of our time, and I’m still optimistic we’re going to figure this out.

HAYES: All right. Congress tackles a big environmental issues, immunity for big oil, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Yesterday marked two years to the day from when an explosion ripped apart the deepwater horizon perceiving to spill an estimated 210 million gallons of BP’s oil into the Gulf of Mexico. BP execs jumped up and down from the sidelines claiming it was not their fault pushing blame in the direction of Transocean, the drilling contractor that owned the rig, and Halliburton, which did the cement work.

But BP had the ultimate authority, which is why BP has tried to lessen the damage to its image with a $20 billion fund to pay the victims of the oil spill. Analysis by financial advisers, Raymond James (ph), puts the total cost to BP at $63 billion by the time this whole thing is done. On Wednesday, BP presented a judge with a tentative $8 billion settlement for roughly 100,000 fishermen, hotel owners, and other plaintiffs.

The significant thing here isn’t the fact that this could turn out to be the largest class action settlement ever, but that this might be the last time big oil will ever have to pay for its mistakes, because there was a hearing Thursday on the domestic fuels protection act, a bipartisan bill
that would effectively protect all oil companies, foreign and domestic, from any liability for deadly accidents resulting from fuel production for transport.

Its purpose as it says, quote, “To provide liability protection for claims based on the design, manufacture, sale, offer for sale, introduction to commerce, or use of certain fuels and fuel additives and for other purposes.” Nice and broad there.

This is where we are two years after the oil spill, which the White House called the greatest environmental disaster of its kind in our history with BP back to drilling at 6,000 feet in the gulf, and the people in the gulf tired of suffering.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If the outside don’t help us, we’re going to die. We need their voices to help strengthen ours. So, if they don’t help us, we’re going to die. And BP is going to sit and watch us die.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) politicians make me sick. I’ve been to D.C., all dressed up, button down slacks. Then you catch them in public, oh, I’m a publicly embarrass this person and make them make a promise of Sen. Mary Landrieu, I’m going to make sure everything’s all right.

Governor Jindal stood there in my five-year-old’s face, I’m going to make sure everything’s OK, he said. And — they’re watching my baby.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: We invited a representative from BP to join us on the show today, but they declined. I think one of the things that’s striking to me about the two-year anniversary, and sometimes, — I never like to do stuff on anniversaries, because it feels like an artificial news pack, but I wanted to do this today because if you go back and you look at the footage, this was all we talked about for about 50 days.

I mean, we all watched that thing gush. It was the front page every day. Completely — and then it’s like — ooh.

(LAUGHTER)

HAYES: And never heard from again, like, oh, well, that’s done. Back to drilling. And, you know, there’s the question of, have the people gotten restitution? And has there been accountability? And also, what are we doing to avoid the next possible disaster from drilling at the depth for drilling, and it seems to me from the reading I’ve been doing, the folks I’ve been talking to the gulf, that there’s not been a lot done to ameliorate the possibility of the future —

SEDER: Actually, I spoke to one of the attorneys on the plain (ph) and steering committee of this, and the settlement is pretty big.

HAYES: Yes.

SEDER: And the $8 billion figure is actually the figure that BP is putting out there as a way of reassuring their investors, their shareholders. But, the problem is, is that even if it’s — regardless of how many times a billion it is, it doesn’t go anywhere near enough to change the incentive structure or the decisions and whole — the hundreds of decisions to cut corners essentially to save money that went into creating this disaster.

And so, when you start to see legislation that’s actually going to sort of decrease that liability, we have a real problem in this country, because there doesn’t seem to be any way to change the behavior of these corporations, because we see regulatory bodies being corrupted in some respects, and we see an attempt now to keep civil response capped essentially.

HAYES: And one of the things we’re seeing now that I find really frustrating and strange about this situation is, there’s a lot of science being conducted about the effects, but all that science is essentially under lock a key because of the fact of just active litigation. And so, it’s very hard to get public information about what’s going on.

SEDER: That’s why they settled.

HAYES: Right. Yes.

SEDER: That’s why they settled, because we can hear stories about shrimp without eye sockets which we’re hearing a lot of now, but all that stuff that’s going to be — that could have come out in a trial would have been very problematic.

HAYES: We have a journalist who wrote a great investigative piece about the effects two years later. She’s going to join us from New Orleans right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Levon Helm who we lost this week here on this Saturday morning. I want to bring in Antonia Juhasz who is joining us from New Orleans. She’s the author of the book, “Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf oil spill.” Antonia, welcome.

ANTONIA JUHASZ, AUTHOR, “BLACK TIDE”: Thanks for having me. Good morning.

HAYES: Good morning. You wrote a great investigative piece in the nation this week about what the gulf is like two years later. For people that haven’t been paying attention to the story, they are now coming back to it, and you’ve been spending the last few years reporting on it. What has been overlooked? What should they know? What do people feel like in the gulf about the effects of this had been?

JUHASZ: The most important thing is that this is an ongoing tragedy. Let’s remember that it began with the death of 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon. That was the beginning what unleashed what, if it wasn’t for Saddam Hussein intentionally releasing oil in 1991 to attack U.S. soldiers would be hands down the largest oil disaster without comparison in the history of the world.

It impacted five states, 21 million people, an enormous body of water, and enormously ecologically rich and diverse body of water, and the consequences began on April 28, 2010 and continue aggressively today. We can expect them to continue aggressively into the future.

And, what is being felt, I think, some of the greatest problems that are being felt are basically on every light form that is dependent on that water. So, we’ve seen enormous harm to the fish species and sea life that try to live in the gulf. We’ve seen entire species where there is concern
that they won’t come back.

Enormous declines in the availability and production of shrimp, of clamps, of oysters, of all the seafood, which of course, impacts fisherers. They’re deeply concerned two years out now, not only have they separate two years of in some places no crops, and in other places, seriously declined crops that there isn’t reproductive capacity of those species.

And that’s similar to the Exxon Valdez in Alaska where 20 years later, the heiring population has not recovered. That we’re going to continue to see that type of impact on the species on which an entire gulf economy is based. Now, that — sorry.

HAYES: No, that was great. I just want to — when I was doing research for this, I was not quite aware of how long the cascade of effects in the Exxon Valdez spill — how long that chain was? And also, the degree to which affects first started surfacing years and years after the spill.

So, certain ecological effects happened only four years afterwards where it look — it didn’t look initially like there was going to be a problem with the given species, and then, four years later, there was.

Well, you know, the oil — let’s remember that oil isn’t toxin. It contains volatile organic compounds. It contains a group of chemicals that are called PAHS that are in duration and amount of exposure deadly to life forms, deadly to humans, deadly to sea life, deadly to plant life.

And when you add to that the two million gallons of chemical Corexit, the dispersant that were applied — was applied which is also made of toxins, you have what, Dr. James Diaz, who’s one of the many doctors I interviewed for my piece told me, described as a toxic gumbo of chemicals to which the people and the sea life of the gulf has been exposed.

And so, that oil did not magically disappear. It’s still on the bottom of the gulf. It’s still in the water. It still washes up on beaches. I was just on Grand Isle yesterday in Louisiana and picked up tar balls, picked up oil. You can scoop it up on beaches every day, and that toxic mixture is still impacting the sea life that is supposed to be living on the bottom of the ocean, supposed to be living in the ocean.

If you kill out parts down the line or fill them with toxins, the next species that eats the toxic sea life gets impacted by it, and that includes us. So, one of the foci (ph) of my story this week was about the human health crisis.

HAYES: Antonia, I want to hear about that, because you go into detail on that. I want to talk about the response of the government and BP right after we take a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Back talking about the two-year anniversary of the Transocean spill. And, Christine, I want to talk to you about something, because one of the things that happens in the wake of disaster is government says either things are OK or things are not OK, right?

And this is something that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about writing a book, and right now, when you direct questions to BP about, say, the safety of the seafood, they say, don’t trust us. Trust the government. The government is checking it if this is OK. When you were at the EPA, you know, you had, you guys lived through 9/11.

There was the pronouncements afterwards that came from the EPA. The air was safe to breathe. It, later, turned out not to be safe to breath or not as safe as had been claimed. And I wonder the degree to which people feel like we can trust those pronouncements, that they’re made in good faith and they’re not being corrupted by the need to say that things are OK, because that’s what’s politically expedient?

WHITMAN: Well, I can’t speak to what’s happening in the gulf, but I can tell you on air quality. The air quality in Lower Manhattan in general was safe to breathe, and that was based on scientific fact. On the pile, entirely different. No, it was not, needed respirators. And, that’s where government gets into a problem in trying to deliver a bifurcated message like that.

And, I think it did seriously undermine people’s confidence in government, because it’s all been lumped together and said, oh, you said the air was safe to breathe and people are dying. People who have rescued who were on the pile, I believe, absolutely are having health effects from having breathed that air.

But we always told them, EPA told them every day in meetings and the rest of it that they should wear respirators.

HAYES: And there’s a distinction —

WHITMAN: There’s a distinction, which is hard to make. Now, I don’t know the gulf. I haven’t been part of EPA’s testing of the waters and testing of the food supply. But you do have to (INAUDIBLE) impact, too. You have to look over time and what it does to the sea life and the ecology over time and then how that affects humans.

HAYES: And Antonia, what I want to ask you is —

WHITMAN: But there is pressure. There’s no question. I mean, you look at that piece, Antonia’s piece, and I have to think it’s important, and we need to know what she’s saying, and it needs to be out there, and I know that there are a lot of those — I would bet that there are some of those in the gulf who are torn.

Is this a good thing or is it scaring people away so they’ll buy even less shrimp and they won’t come visit?

HAYES: Right.

WHITMAN: That’s their day-to-day economy.

HAYES: Yes. And that is also political pressure, obviously, locally to say things are good, right, because you don’t want — what you don’t want to do is wave the flag and say, this is the most devastated part of country.

WHITMAN: Exactly. Don’t come.

HAYES: Antonia, will you stick around, because I didn’t get you here, but I want you to talk about what you found on there, and also, I want you to talk about if there is this kind of trust gap that’s opened up down in the gulf between what the pronouncements are, whether they’re coming from the government or from BP and what people are seeing on the ground.

More on that right after we take this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: Good morning from New York. I’m Chris Hayes here with Victoria DeFrancesco Sotto from Latino Decisions, Sam Seder from Majority.FM. We’re now joined by Josh Borrow, a contributor of Forbes.com, and we have Bob Herbert from the Demo think tank. I want to thank in absentia, Christine Todd Whitman, who — we were up against the heartbreak and so I had to get out, so I did not get to thank her in person for joining us.

And we have Antonia Juhasz on the line from New Orleans. Antonia has written a book about the oil spill and its effect and wrote a cover investigative piece for “The Nation” this week.

Antonia, we were just talking about trust and whether you can trust pronouncements. I was referring to the infamous proclamation about the air being safe after 9/11 when Christine Todd Whitman was head of the EPA. Federal judge later found that characterization misleading.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRIS HAYES, HOST: And we have Antonia Juhasz on the line from New Orleans. Antonia has written a book about the oil spill and its affects, and wrote a cover investigative piece for “The Nation” this week.

Antonio, we were just talking about trust, and whether you can trust the pronouncements. I was referring to the infamous proclamation about the air being safe after 9/11 when Christine Todd Whitman was head of the EPA. A federal judge later found that characterization misleading.

Do people — is there a gap between what the government, or what BP is saying and what people are experiencing?

ANTONIA JUHASZ, AUTHOR, “BLACK TIDE”: Yes, absolutely. I just want to say in response to Secretary Whitman’s last statement, what’s very important to understand about the Gulf of Mexico right now and this oil spill is that it covers five beautiful states.

On any given day, there’s a beautiful beach in the Gulf of Mexico, and on any given day there’s an oil beach. On any given day, there are healthy people. And on any given day, there are hundreds of thousands of sick people.

And if we’re going to do anything about the latter, harmful ongoing impacts, we have to acknowledge their existence in the same we’ve acknowledged there’s a healthy part of the gulf that we’re trying to move to.

HAYES: Right.

JUHASZ: That both are happening simultaneously and the problem with the information that’s been coming out from the federal government and from BP is that it’s tried to paint just one picture, and that’s the rosy picture, and focus in on that, which means we’re ignoring these continued harmful impacts so that the quintessential moment in the BP gulf oil spill was on August 15th when the Obama administration, several members of it, got on television and announced that the vast majority of the oil is gone.

The scientists who wrote the report that they were referring to immediately started calling reporters and getting on the news saying, that’s not what we found. What we found was the opposite, that the majority of the oil is still there. And that was the critical, one of the critical breaking points.

When we look, for example, at seafood safety in the Gulf, the Federal Drug Administration decided that Gulf seafood is safe. The reality is that that study was based on a 176-pound man who eats the average diet of an American — across the United States.

In the Gulf Coast — well, for one thing around the whole world, around the whole country, we have women and we have children who have different weights, generally than men, which means that their exposure to the chemicals in the seafood affects them more harmfully. We have women
who are pregnant, and could be pregnant, who pass on those toxins to their children. But in the Gulf Coast in particular, they eat a lot more seafood.

HAYES: Right.

JUHASZ: If you’ve of been to Louisiana you know this.

HAYES: Oh, yes.

JUHASZ: And there also are subsistence eaters, who that — they eat what they catch. Tor for the people of the Gulf Coast, seafood is something they need to worry about, even if it isn’t as much a concern for the men on the show, for example.

HAYES: I’ll keep that in mind. Cut down on my gulf shrimp consumption, but — which, of course, the last thing the people in the Gulf want to hear.

But you just said — a number of — hundreds of thousands of people are sick. That sounds like a big number and I want you to just back up that citation. How do we know how many are sick? How can we attribute the causes to the spill? How — how can we responsibly conclude what the cause and effect is?

JUHASZ: So, one of the things that’s been very important about this oil spill is that it comes in the wake of the Valdez. And one of the great victories of the Valdez was that under the Bush, Sr. administration, the Congress acted, and we got a great piece of legislation called the Oil Pollution Act. And the response to this disaster, significantly larger disaster, we’ve not had a single piece of legislation passed.

HAYES: Yes.

JUHASZ: But the good news is, we have the Oil Pollution Act, which required a lot of immediate, on the ground responses. It also required a lot of infrastructure to be put into place, and a legal structure in which lawyers could start responding to the disaster.

And the result of all of that is that right now, we have a medical settlement on the table which is the result of a lot of study, a lot of activism by Gulf residents which looks at a minimum about 200,000 people that are basically automatically considered to be part of this group. And the reason why they’re automatically considered is because we know that based on where they live and also based on cleanup workers, about 140,000 of whom should be in this group but only 90,000 are, the cleanup workers and those who live on the coast were constantly exposed to this enormous amount of oil and chemicals and they were not being provided with adequate health care, with adequate protection.

I cite a Government Accountability Project study in my article that started to look at whistle-blowers and what they’re reporting from their cleanup exposure, and what we’re seeing are the expected results of exposures to the chemicals in oil and Corexit. And those are as minimal as
skin rashes, although those that have them wouldn’t call them minimal. They’re called BP rash. They are the BP moment, which is the memory loss that people are suffering because the chemicals are attracted to the brain, which is a nice fatty source for them to suck into.

There are extreme impacts that are already being reported, dementia is one that I report in my article. But everything from coughs, constant bronchial problems, bleeding from ears, nose, the rectum, these symptoms are also indicative of most likely the longer-term expected chronic
impacts, cancers, neurological disorders, birth defects. These are the expected outcomes of this type of exposure, and people in the Gulf are experiencing them, and I honestly think based on my studies that 200,000 figure is probably small.

Again, remember, 21 million people live on the Gulf Coast. They were exposed to an unprecedented environmental disaster. They’re going to suffer the human consequences.

HAYES: Antonia, this — one of the things that gets confusing about this, is there’s a bunch of parallel processes in place.

There are civil suits, class action suits that have been consolidated based on different kinds of classes. Health effects has been disaggregated from economic effects.

There’s the natural resources, damage assessment, which is happening under the Oil Spill Act that you mentioned. That’s coming up with a tally.

There’s the money that BP has put up front.

And then, of course, also fines under the Clean Water Act.

So there’s a bunch of different processes that are happening, and all of those are going to continue to play out and we should keep checking back in so we don’t just forget about the Gulf.

Antonia Juhasz, author of the book, “Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill” — thanks so much for your time this morning, really, really important reporting. Thank you.

JUHASZ: Thank you for having me.

HAYES: President Obama says he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Mitt Romney gets offended. We’ll explain why, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: President Obama stirred, I guess, controversy this week with what many perceived as sly jab at Mitt Romney’s privileged upbringing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Somebody gave me an education. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Michelle wasn’t. But somebody gave us a chance. Just like these folks up here are looking for a chance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Speaking in front of a job training center, Romney then took umbrage with the remark in an interview on FOX News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I’m not going to apologize for my dad’s success, but I know the president likes to attack fellow Americans. He’s always looking for a scapegoat, particularly those that have been successful like my dad and I’m not going to rise to that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Romney has consistently mythologized the financial and political success of his father, George Romney, as a sort of Horatio Alger story. Indeed, Romney’s own fortune is the ethos of the American dream, perhaps the ideal ending to his father’s story. If you work hard and pull
yourself up by the bootstraps, you’ll be able to pass that on to your children.

Piece by piece, however, Republicans have worked to systemically dismantle the very programs that would give low-income Americans the chance to escape entrenched generational poverty and achieve the kind of success Romney extols in his father’s story.

This week, that effort gave us a Republican proposal to slash billions from various components of the social safety net, including the federal SNAP program, formerly known as food stamps. Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee, inspired by Representative Paul Ryan’s budget approved a proposed farm bill that would cut food stamps, some supplemental nutritional systems program by more than $30 billion over the next 10 years. And that’s pennies compared to the cuts proposed under Ryan’s budget plan which would total more than $130 billion over 10 years.

I — digging into the data on food stamps’ SNAP, I feel bad, because people know it as food stamps, but they’re trying to get away from the term food stamp. So, let’s just like stipulate here and we’ll call it SNAP from here on out. OK. Stipulated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

HAYES: No? You like food stamps.

The data on this is shocking, I mean, just in terms of the rise of the program. Now, about 45 million Americans, because largely because of the devastating consequences of the great recession. Eighty-fived percent of those people have a gross income below the federal poverty line which is about $22,000 for a family of four.

So, we are talking about — and about half of them, I believe, are employed, right? This has become a way to essentially supplement the insufficient wages of people that are the working poor, and it’s also been one of the most effective ways of mitigating poverty here in the great
recession. This is a chart that shows how it virtually erased the rise in extreme poverty among children during the recession. Check this out.

The top line — do we have this? Maybe not. There it is. OK.

The top line, what the growth, the number of extremely poor families would have been without food stamps and the bottom what it was with food stamps. The gap between the two is, poverty mitigation brought to you by food stamps and now, they’re going after food stamps.

Josh, defend your voice.

(LAUGHTER)

JOSH BARRO, BLOGS.FORBES.COM: I disagree with this choice. I think that, you know– I think we need to have a broad rethinking of the way that we do income support and social programs in the U.S. because we have this patchwork.

HAYES: Yes.

BARRO: You have SNAP, and then you have Section 8, and then you have the earned income tax credit, for all of these. And one thing I really worry about with these programs is the issue of poverty traps, where basically you have who are working poor, maybe, you know, a family with an income around $25,000, as they try to work harder and earn money, they face a marginal tax rate that can approach 100 percent because they pay taxes on that income and they lose benefits as they get welfare.

HAYES: Right.

BARRO: And so —

HAYES: And a critical factor. And we talked about it last week when we’re having this discussion that when you — one of the days that ways that TANF was reform, you know, welfare reform, was to get rid of these cliffs effects, right? You don’t want it to be ever the case.

But if someone gets a raise or gets a better job, the actual gross amount of income they’re taking into their family, net amount of income they’re taking in in their family reduces. But when you combine all the federal programs together, you do have these cliff effects.

BARRO: Right. And you have state programs on top of that. And this is also going to become a bigger problem as the health care law comes into effect, assuming that it does, because this is another big means test of entitlement program. The people lose the benefit of this as they gain income. So, I think that needs to be addressed.

But I don’t think that it — I think that food stamps are a relatively good welfare program within the universal programs that we have. I think they are an effective means of poverty mitigation. So, I don’t think it makes sense to go after that in the budget.

VICTORIA DEFRANCESCO SOTO, LATINO DECISIONS: Yes. And SNAP isn’t just about providing dollars for food. It’s also trying to address issues such as obesity. It’s food and security.

1. So, you have $2 and you go buy a bag of chips and grape soda. What they’re trying to do through SNAP, they have a pilot program where they are starting with farmer’s markets to accept SNAP —

HAYES: They use their card.

DEFRANCESCO SOTO: — so they can go to select farmer’s markets. So, it’s also trying to give people the healthier foods. So, not only are they cutting the numbers, but they’re cutting the types of nutritional supplements that are available, especially children. About half of the recipients are children.

BOB HERBERT, DEMOS.ORG: What we’re talking about here are blatantly cruel proposals. One in five American children is poor. One in three African-American children is poor.

It would be even more if we didn’t have the food stamp programs. Those numbers would be even higher. But what you’re talking about is, as poverty is increasing in the United States, at the same time the rich are getting richer, we’re talking about going in and taking food off of the table of poor children? What is the matter with us?

SAM SEDER, MAJORITY.FM: And the point that I make, you mentioned this at the top of the segment, but it can’t be stated enough, that the program hasn’t grown.

HAYES: Right.

SEDER: The participants have grown, because that many people have dropped further down on the income spectrum. And so that’s really the problem, because we see this demagogue over and over again that this program’s out of control. It keeps growing, keeps growing, as if more people are being admitted into it because the requirements are being loosened. But in fact, it’s a function of there’s something fundamentally wrong with our economy.

HAYES: Well, and the CBO and Paul Ryan talks about the growth of the program, CBO projects that as a share of GDP, it will be back to 1995 levels in about six years, right? As this sort of we get through the worst effects of the Great Recession. People get back into the labor market.

But there’s a broader issue here I think about the way we think about income support for people at the bottom of the social hierarchy and economic pyramid, which is we have moved towards programs like the earned income tax credit, the way that TANF now works and SNAP, which are ways to essentially subsidize the working poor so that they can have essentially enough to just barely get by while working.

And it strikes me as an — that that’s a sort of dystopic vision of the future in which people have — there’s a huge class of people who are making not enough money to actually subsist on. The only thing that gets them actually to subsistent level is a government subsidy that makes —

HERBERT: And not only that, we’re subsidizing the corporations who pay them. It’s a wage subsidy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.

HERBERT: So, you know, the corporations would have to pay more together. We should be raising the minimum wage and we should be insisting that Americans who work for a living get paid a decent wage for that work.

HAYES: Josh?

BARRO: I don’t know what else you’re supposed to do about growing inequality. I mean, the reason you have wage inequality is you have different productivity levels and you have — you have growing gaps of inequality because the economy is changing in ways such as that the returns to labor are just getting bigger and bigger for people at the top.

HAYES: It’s a much, much more complicated story.

(CROSSTALK)

BARRO: This is a big part of the story.

HAYES: Part of the story.

BARRO: And one of the key things the government can do to alleviate inequality in that situation is transfer —

HAYES: Right.

BARRO: So yes, this is a concern. Actually concerned more often voiced on right that you have a growing class of people who are living — are living and requiring government subsidies in order to be able to support themselves at a level that is deemed by society to be at such level —

HERBERT: A lot of things to do about inequality, though, you can have a more progressive income tax. Make access to higher education more affordable. I mean, there are just endless numbers of things that you can do about inequality.

HAYES: Just in terms of to reaffirm this point about inequality, this is the income gains during the recovery, in the first year of the recovery, we should say. Not the entire recovery. We have data from the first year.

Ninety-three percent of all the income gains in the first year in recovery went to the top —

HERBERT: Looks like Pac-man.

HAYES: Exactly.

HERBERT: That is so sad. Ninety-three percent of all income gains go to the top 1 percent? That should be hammered home to Americans. I mean, pound, pound, pound.

DEFRANCESCO SOTO: And during the recession, what we saw with our minority communities was that within the African-American community, plummeted 55 percent, Latinos 56 percent. And then within those communities, wealth is becoming more skewed. So, this is a problem that keeps growing.

HERBERT: There’s basically no wealth in the African-American community. I think the median is something like $2,200. If you have $2,200 and your car breaks down, your — or something happens to the roof of your home, your wealth is gone.

HAYES: Actually, one of the proposed changes to SNAP from the Republicans is to put in an acid test, so that if you have any money in the bank, or a certain amount of money in the bank, you can’t receive it.

But I want to talk how this affects social mobility, right after we take this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMNEY: My dad, as you know, born in Mexico, poor, didn’t get a college degree, became head of a car company. I could have stayed in Detroit like him and gotten pulled up in a car company. I went off on my own. I didn’t inherent money from my parents. What I have, I earned. I worked hard, the American way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: That’s Mitt Romney in a public primary debate in Detroit sort of asserting his own, kind of, if not rags to riches sort of median riches to ultra riches story. And I think it’s very interesting the way that he has to — and one of the conventions of running for president, is to construct for yourself some kind of meritocratic success story, even when it flies in the face of all the facts, right?

So, George H.W. Bush talked about how he left behind Connecticut and struck out his own Texas oil fields, even though he was from — you know, the son of a senator and four five generations of prominent members of society and wealth folks.

George W. Bush had this whole kind of conversion story, about like, you know, getting rid of his drinking ways and his loose youth and turning his life around.

And Mitt Romney is in the midst of kind of constructing even though the fact that his father was a governor, had a major car company, constructing for himself this meritocratic story supplemented by Ann Romney describing their early years together as students at BYU. “We moved into a $65 a month basement apartment with a cement floor and live there two years as students with no income. It was tiny.

And I didn’t have money to carpet the floor. But you can get remnants, samples. I glued them together, all different colors. It looked awful, but it was carpeting. We were happy, studying hard. Neither one of us had a job because Mitt had enough of investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time. The stock came from Mitt’s father.”

(LAUGHTER)

HAYES: So even — even in constructing her sort of like hardscrabble days in BYU student housing, which is stapling — they’re paying for stapling by selling the dad’s income. And to me what this gets at is, this perverse way that we think about the American dream and mobility, which is that I think Mitt Romney really does believe that his wealth is entirely independent of the privilege he inherited from the father. I think he really believes that.

DEFRANCESCO SOTO: I love how he phrased it in terms of my father was poor from Mexico. So, he’s almost latching on to this immigrant story.

HAYES: Yes, yes.

DEFRANCESCO SOTO: And using this as the American dream where nothing could be farther from the truth. His father ended up in Mexico because he was fleeing from the United States because of polygamy.

HAYES: Yes. Well, I would say fleeing religious persecution. But —

BARRO: Also, I guess my question is how should Mitt Romney talk about his successful career? I mean, you say he constructed a meritocratic story. He does have a meritorious business career. He’s a much more successful business person than his father was, and while he obviously came in with a lot of advantages, he’s also — he’s a smart guy who worked hard and had a lot of success.

SEDER: Well, that’s exactly it. I mean, that’s what’s so strange about it is because he could say that.

HERBERT: I agree.

SEDER: I started off with a lot of advantages. I didn’t have to pay for college. I didn’t have student debt that got through. I had an investment that I dipped in to pay for.

I am very lucky and I feel responsible enough. And I appreciate the advantage I had and I want to help those who don’t have that advantage.

But he cannot admit that. That’s what’s so stunning about this, is that I don’t think there’s anything problematic about having a wealthy person who run for office. But the fact that you do not appreciate the opportunities you had as your father being a governor, and CEO of a major car corporation, and where that puts you at the beginning of the race.

HAYES: This is the famous line right on George W. Bush — born on third base, you hit a triple.

You asked how he can’t talk about it. I will show you one way he can talk about it.

This is Mitt Romney in 1994 dug up by a news segment producer, Sal Gentilli (ph). Hat tip, Sal — who found this from Romney in 1994.

Here’s him talking about his success in, I think, a remarkably frank and honest way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROMNEY: I believe we should maintain America as an opportunity society led by free people and free enterprises. It is opportunity and freedom which has driven our economy to be the most powerful in the world and created jobs for people across this —

I have spent my life not just in earning money. I was lucky about four years ago to win the lottery, almost literally. I got involved in a business that became more successful than anything I imagined. But that isn’t how we grew up. That isn’t how we started living.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: That — obviously, the first bite wasn’t right. The second one was. But that’s a remarkable thing to say. I almost literally won the lottery. I got into this business.

And there’s no question, all accounts of Mitt Romney as a private equity baron, say that he was very good at what he did. I mean, that is almost universally the case. In terms of pursuing profit for his investors, and for himself and for his partners, he was very good at what he did.

But — boy, you’re grimacing. But he was.

SEDER: No, no.

HAYES: I mean, I’m saying within the confines of what it was.

SEDER: He won the lottery. And you don’t hear a lot of people on a winning team criticizing other players, but be that as it may.

HAYES: Right. But that is what I thought was a remarkably frank way of talking about it. And one of the things we can’t have this discussion about is, we have to keep reaffirming the idea that success is just 100 percent a product of determination, grit, talent, all of these things as opposed to being honest about the amount of both contingency and privilege that amount to being able to be Mitt Romney with a quarter million dollars in the bank and running for president.

HERBERT: And the weird thing is that the American electorate has voted for wealthy, privileged individuals again and again for president. They haven’t held it against them. You know, you go back to FDR, and I’m sure further back than that. But the Kennedys, you know —

HAYES: Right, I mean, that’s the thing —

HERBERT: The country does not have a problem with that.

(CROSSTALK)

SEDER: Across the spectrum or is this something that we see on the right? Because they must maintain this notion of society being meritocratic. And my sense is that this is something that a guy like Mitt Romney feels a lot more pressure to sort of put out there than you would see across the aisle.

HAYES: I think it is something that is a shared vision of both left and right, but I think it’s more emphasis on the right. But I think the idea of the American Dream as — I mean, here’s a sort of interesting juxtaposition.

This is America’s economic mobility relative to other places, right? We think of America as the place that is the most mobile, right? De Tocqueville said, you know, in democracy in America, the Americans have no word for peasant because that class is unknown there.

And this is — if you — the economic mobility relative to other countries. Denmark, three times as mobile. This is intergenerational mobility, right, father to son. Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany — all mobile places in the U.S. The only place less as mobile is the class-bound world of the U.K., from which we broke off, right, partly to slow off the shackles of their aristocratic domination.

If you ask people about the American dream, and this is polling on: do you think the American dream is alive and well, had you achieved it or will you achieve it? Seventy percent say, yes, right? So, there’s this amazing — there’s this amazing sort of disconnect between what people think about how much mobility this country has and what the actual facts of the matter are. I think our political culture has a way of reinforcing it.

Josh?

BARRO: And there’s value in this belief, even regardless of its
truth.

(LAUGHTER)

BARRO: When you look at international survey data, where you asked people in different countries about how much control they feel about their own —

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: It’s very interesting poll.

BARRO: Believing that you have more control over your own fate leads to better economic outcomes because it causes people to work harder. So, I think that, you know, we don’t — while I think it’s important to recognize —

HAYES: You’re saying this is a useful delusion for the masses is
what you’re saying?

(LAUGHTER)

BARRO: Well, this isn’t a statement that’s either true or false.

HAYES: Right. Sure. Of course.

BARRO: There is a degree of social mobility and people believing that they have opportunity for social mobility has value — so does actually having the opportunity for social mobility. But I don’t think we want to undermine —

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: I want you to respond. Let’s take a quick break, and talk more about this after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL RYAN (R), WISCONSIN: We are in upwardly mobile society with a lot of income movement between income groups. Telling Americans that they are stuck in their current station in life, that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control, and that the government’s role is to help them cope with it, that is not who we are. That’s not what we do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Paul Ryan giving a speech about inequality and social mobility, in which I think he was affirming the sort of core Republican beliefs — certainly, conservative belief — about individual achievement and merit in the face of whatever obstacles, equal opportunity, whatever.

But also I think a broadly shared American ethos. I mean, I do think it sort of does cross both parties the way we think about what the American dream is. And yet we have this tension in which the facts and the dream are quite disparate and then they get played out through the morality play of our presidential elections in which you have the somewhat absurd situation of Mitt Romney trying to fashion for himself a carpet stapling background.

HERBERT: There was kind of a narrow period in our history when the American dream was much easier to realize, and those were the early post-World War II decades. So, now, I mean, I agree there’s a degree of social mobility in the society, obviously, but it is not nearly enough.

And it is very, very difficult now, if you’re a poor person – forget about Horatio Alger becoming rich — it’s very difficult if you grow up poor to make it into the middle class nowadays.

DEFRANCESCO SOTO: And we’re also not looking at the institutional barriers. So the American dream supposes that you didn’t live under Jim Crowism, or didn’t go to segregated schools. So it’s not just wealth. It’s income. And wealth is inherited.

While we may be on the same playing field in terms of having the same paycheck, but my great-great grandfather gave my grandfather money for his house it was passed down along the way. We lose sights of that when we’re just looking at the president.

HERBERT: That’s a really good point. I mean, in terms of wealth, forget about it.

HAYES: Right. Disparities in wealth are much greater —

HERBERT: Absolutely.

HAYES: — and that’s because wealth accumulates, it’s a stock, economists say, not a flow, which is what income is, you know?

Josh, you want to respond.

BARRO: I think people overstate how idyllic the ’50s were in terms of equality. The ’50s were a great time to be a lower, medium-skilled white man, partly because of barriers in the labor market. It was the period in U.S. history when we have the tightest immigration policies, so there wasn’t a lot of competition for jobs from immigrants, women were effectively excluded from many sectors in the economy, and so were African Americans.

HAYES: Yes.

BARRO: So, I think that — nobody’s proposing that we should go back to that structure, but it was the sort of unusual confluence of policies that were benefiting this one group and that’s gone away, creating lots of advantages otherwise in society.

HERBERT: I’d push back on that a little bit.

HAYES: I want to push back.

(CROSSTALK)

HAYES: We’ll take another break. I want to hear your response. We’ll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: All right. Josh Barro just referenced the slightly anomalous period in American — the history of American political economy, which is after World War II.

Bob Herbert —

HERBERT: Well, obviously, in the ’50s, it was a tough time for blacks. Women did not have a great deal in the way of opportunities either. But in those early post-war decades, ’50s, ’60s, and into the ’70s, it was tremendous movement up, but in many groups including African-Americans and included women. But I think the most important thing is that there was a movement in the right direction. Progress was being made.

Whereas now, where a lot of people are better certainly than they were back in the ’50s, but we’re going backwards. And I think that’s the big thing to keep our eyes on.

HAYES: And if you look at median wage, they were about where they
were —

HERBERT: In the ’70s.

HAYES: Yes. Well, it depends on sort what measure you use, households or individual.

HERBERT: Yes.

HAYES: For household, it’s around 1996. For individuals, that’s back in the ’70s, that’s partly due to the fact that there’s a substitution effect, as more, two-income earner households.

But this question of mobility I think, Josh, because to me, these two conversations about food stamps and mobility are linked, right? Which is that if you’re going to say, you know, there’s this kind of saying, you know, we don’t believe in equality of outcomes, we believe in equality of opportunity and, you know, everyone talks about two society — you know, well then poor kids have to get enough food so they’re not, like, starving, you know, in order to achieve whatever human potential. It seems to me like even the most kind of conservative vision of providing equality of opportunity has to include some money for food stamps.

BARRO: Well, I think higher ed is another big component to this, and I think that we have so much focus on how broken our health care sector is and how much inflation there is and that, and that’s because that’s on the budget. In higher ed, we’d have basically the same inflation trend as in health care, but because much of that cost is basically shifted to the students.

HAYES: On consumers, yes, exactly.

BARRO: But it’s not taken as big a public policy concern. But a big thing that’s cementing inequality is that education is increasingly expensive. So, it’s a lot harder for people to work their way through college than it used to be. And —

HAYES: And they start — when they do, they start with tremendous amounts of debt.

BARRO: We talk about, you know, how much money to throw at higher education. But, really, the fundamental problem here is just the cost, no matter the payer is, has grown so much in a way that is not producing new value. And that really needs to be addressed so that it can made affordable.

SEDER: I think you’re also going to address education starting on the early side.

HAYES: Sure.

SEDER: The average poor child enters into elementary school knowing something like 2,000 words less.

HAYES: Right.

SEDER: Having a vocabulary that begins as an obstacle right at the beginning of schooling.

DEFRANCESCO SOTO: But what is the disconnect between the Republican electorate and the Republican electorate officials? Because we do see support for programs such as SNAP with the general electorate and in particular with Republicans.

So, what is going on in between is my question.

HAYES: I think there’s two ways to think about it. One is that it sort of trying to demonize the poor and trying to, you know, basically use it as a political cudgel — which is one part of it, I think. But I also think it ends up being a process of elimination.

What’s happened basically is that Republicans say we want to cut spending so we can reduce deficits. But we won’t touch all the stuff that our senior citizen constituency uses, right, which is a huge part of the budget, and we’re not going to defense. So, then, we’re left with a quarter of the budget.

So, then yes, if you define yourself a quarter of the budget to make up all, you’ve got to take a hatchet to everything, right? And so, you end up in places where you can attack without having to feel the wrath of political constituencies that actually support you and vote for you. So, it’s inevitable that you end up sort of backing yourself into SNAP.

All right. What do we know now that we didn’t know last week? My answer’s after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HAYES: In just a moment, what we know now we didn’t know last week. But, first, a quick correction.

Earlier in the program, we incorrectly attributed a still picture of solar panels, the photo actually came from the solarelectriclightfundself.org not the racist Web site stormfront.org. We apologize for that somewhat ridiculous error.

We also have updates on a few stories we’ve been following.

After Mitt Romney said raising kids counts as work, too, some House Democrats are introducing a bill to make that philosophy law. The women’s option to raise kids or WORK Act will let women continue receiving federal assistance while raising kids age 3 or younger. As we reported last week, Romney said in January that even moms with kids as young as two should be cut off from federal assistance if they are not working outside the home. House Republicans are expected to block passage of the WORK Act.

We also have an update on the continuing fallout from the rule that the American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, played in the supporting the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida, that became controversial in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting. ALEC announced it was shutting down its public safety and elections task fierce to, quote, “concentrate on initiatives that spur competitiveness and innovation, and put Americans back to work.” Read union-busting.

That didn’t stop Yum Brands, the operator of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell this week from joining 11 others companies, including McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, that have dropped out of ALEC.

And, finally, quick update on my Mike Oust (ph), the Houston pastor, who revealed on our program that he no longer believes in God. After his appearance on our program, he and his church mutually agreed to part ways. Mike addressed the congregation to explain why, and reactions ranged from hostile to supportive, to secretly sympathetic. Mike tells us he’s in discussions about forming what he call as post-Christian church and plans to continue doing weddings and funerals secularly.

So, what do we know now we didn’t know last week?

We know that one small thing won’t solve the problem of climate but that the ultimate solution requires thousands and millions of small things done at every little thing from the individual up to government.

We know that we cannot expiate our duty to act as citizens by simply being more enlightened consumers and we know we have a moral obligation both to future generations and those who inhabit the areas of the world most at risk of climate disaster to use our relative privilege to force our own government to act.

We now know what the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop’s opinion is truly worth to the House Republicans after the bishop sent a letter to the chair of the agriculture committee chastising his proposed budget for failing a moral criteria because it slashes food stamp spending at a time for record poverty.

We know that on social issues, Republicans are more than happy to parade around the bishop imprimatur. But as soon as issue is economic fairness or war and peace, they tune out.

Thanks to U.S. Congressman Gary Peters. We know that Federal Stafford College loan interest rates are scheduled to double in July. We know that student debt is now larger than auto loan debt and credit card debt, according to economists and the New York Fed. And we’ve instructed an entire generation to take out debt in order to get an education and are now releasing them into the worst labor market in 30 years.

We also know that Congress can act to stop interest rate spike. But as of now, Republican members of Congress don’t appear to be onboard.

We know that this week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal received a petition from Amnesty International with tens of thousands of signatories from 125 different countries on behalf of Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox.

Those two incarcerated men founded a Black Panther chapter in the infamous Angola, Louisiana Prison. And as of April 17th, the two men have been held in solitary confinement for 40 years. They are each in a 6x9x12-foot cell for 23 hours a day, with exercise three times a week — every week, every month, every year, for 40 years.

The state says they murdered a guard in prison, while the men maintained they were framed as punishment for their political activism. Their fellow inmate, Robert King, spent 29 years in solitary before being released in 2001 when his conviction was overturned.

We know that information about the number of prisoners being held in solitary confinement is hard to come by. The last time data was collected was 12 years ago when the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that approximately 80,000 people confined in segregation units in state and federal prisons.

And, finally, we now know that not every group of shareholders simply rubber stamps management’s exorbitant pay proposals. Citi shareholders give a non-binding vote of no to the proposed $50 million pay package for CEO Vikram Pandit and opposed compensation packages for four other top executives as well. We know that the system of CEO cronyism farce in which highly paid CEOs sit on other highly-paid CEOs compensation where, shockingly, they recommend exorbitant compensation.

We know that in 2010, CEO pay was up 23 percent. And in 2011, it was up another 14 percent. This list you see scrolling here is the 50 most highly paid CEOs at U.S. public companies in 2011.

We know that some Citi shareholders have now actually sued over the executive compensation at Citi and we know that reforming corporate governance is one of the key battles in finally ending the country’s ever accelerating inequality trends.

All right. So I want to hear what you guys know now that you didn’t know at the end of the week.

Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, I’ll start with you.

DEFRANCESCO SOTO: A Pew study came out this week showing that a greater number of women in comparison to men desire successful, high-paying jobs. So, 66 percent of women compared to 59 percent, and so we have seen growth since the last time this was done. However, this doesn’t mean that women do not also put a premium on marriage and parenting. We don’t see them as mutually exclusive. In short, we want it all.

HAYES: Yes. It was actually a really interesting data, because it showed that women wanted more successful jobs, also want to get married, also want to have kids, and then we’re basically just like playing around and playing video games, as far as we can tell. That’s an oversimplification of the public opinion data.

HERBERT: Guys have been doing that all along. They want it all.

HAYES: Sam Seder, what do you now know?

SEDER: Well, I’m going to go —

HAYES: Did I take your —

(CROSSTALK)

SEDER: Yes. But about 2 1/2 months ago, Eric Schneiderman sat at this table and told you that if something wasn’t happening within six months, he was going to be disappointed with the financial fraud task force that he joined. And in part at least to sign on to an agreement that allowed essentially the banks to get away with all sorts of mortgage fraud for basically a pittance.

Well, we’re three months later, and there’s no office has been set up for this financial fraud task force. Now, we’ve been told that we don’t really need offices, people are talking, and we’re using resources.

HAYES: Conference calls, e-mail chains.

SEDER: Conference calls, e-mail chains. But it’s going to be really hard without an office, I think, in three months to see any real progress.

And what we do know is that following that agreement foreclosures have spiked, because the banks were afraid to go into the courtroom with essentially faulty documents showing a lack of a chain of title. And now, they feel a little more confident doing that.

HAYES: That’s really interesting.

Josh Barro, what do we know now?

BARRO: We had good news on the urban development front this week. Darrell Issa, who is chairman of House oversight and I’m sure is a favorite of people watching this program.

HAYES: Absolutely.

BARRO: He is working with the Washington, D.C. Mayor Vince Gray to repeal the 102-year law that limits height of buildings in Washington, D.C. Simultaneously, Mayor Bloomberg here in New York has put out a proposal to up-zone the area right around Grand Central, in midtown, and allow more super-tall buildings. The city has created a lot of ton of wealth in our society and allowing to get even denser, will allow them to create even more wealth and jobs and I think this is really good news.

HAYES: Yes, there is a book out by Matt Yglesias which is an e-book
who is now writing for “Slate” on economic cover (ph), “The Rent is Too Damn High,” which is an e-book, it’s Kindle single which sort of makes an argument for the importance of density and zoning laws and sort of driving the economic growth, and he really hates those height limits, too. So, that’s interesting.

Bob Herbert, what do you now know?

HERBERT: We are not making as much progress on the economy as some pundits and politics would have us believe. Both “The New York Times” and the “Wall Street Journal” led the paper on Friday with stories saying that the recovery appears to be weakening. So, there’s a great deal more to be done on that front.

HAYES: Yes, there’s a fair amount of — it’s very hard that you end up in a position of essentially economic forecaster when you’re covering the politics right now, particularly the election, because everyone understands that macro economic health is going to be the driving factor in terms of the president’s re-election prospects. And so, then, we all end up in a slightly bizarre kind of amateur role of, you know, trying to make these macro economic predictions, which, you know, if I was very good at, you know, there’s actually a lot of money to be made.

(CROSSTALK)

SEDER: More important is the narrative —

HAYES: Right.

SEDER: — as much as the actual macro economic trends is the narrative.

HERBERT: And more important even than that, there are the number of people who are still out of work or underemployed.

HAYES: Yes.

My thanks to Victoria DeFrancesco Soto from Latino Decisions, Sam Seder from Majority.fm, Josh Barro from Forbes.com, and Bob Herbert, author of the book, “Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream.”

Thanks for getting up. Thank you for joining us today for “UP.” Join us tomorrow, Sunday morning at 8:00, when we’ll be talking Iran and Israel with author Peter Beinart.

You can get more info about tomorrow’s program at Up.MSNBC.com.

And coming up next is Melissa Harris-Perry.

Melissa, what have you got today?

MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY, MSNBC HOST: All that, all that.

Well, we’re going to talk about the 2008 — excuse me, well, we can still talk the 2008 election, but we’re really going to talk about the 2012 elections and trying to think about where President Obama stands right now and how in fact this is not all in the bag yet. There is a real election coming up.

We’re also going to take a look at Louisiana. We’re going to ask about shrimp who don’t have eyes and crabs that don’t have legs and all of the stories that we need to hear still about the BP oil spill.

And then, of course, as you know because of me doing cheerleading moves in nerd land yesterday, we’re going to talk about the Title IX and women and sports.

HAYES: Yes. You were doing some amazing moves up in the floor yesterday, and brought the staff out of the offices.

That’s Melissa Harris-Perry coming up next, and we’ll see you right here tomorrow at 8:00. Thanks for getting up.