Transcripts For MSNBC Up W Chris Hayes 20120128

carolyn maloney, heather mcghee, director of the washington office, josh barro,. i want to talk about mitt romney's taxes for the second week in a row, from here until the election happens quite frankly. we can do four hours every weekend about mitt romney's taxes as far as i'm concerned. his taxes continued to be a significant obstacle and problem for him in terms of the campaign. in the last debate, romney was not only debating newt gingrich on the topic, he was parentally debating himself. first he said this about his investments. >> first of all, my investments are not made by me. my investments for the last ten years have been in a blind trust managed by a trustee. >> blind trusts are people, my friends. get that? he didn't make those investments. right? he did not make the investments. then he went on to say this. >> the speaker, you've indicated that somehow i don't eastern that money. i have earned the money i have. i didn't inherit it. i take risk. i make investments. those investments lead to jobs being created in america. >> he didn't make the investments himself but he did make investment. he earned it all but don't hold him responsible for the details. romney's answers on his finances raise more questions. before we get into the weeds of tax policy, which believe me we're going to do. if you're thinking to yourself, i hope we get into a serious double taxation conversation, you are in luck. before we get there, i think the question of tax equity that's been put on the table, both because of this sort of confluence of events, mitt romney's taxes, his taxes being released, the debate over tax policy that's happening and obviously the obama administration is marshaling this to talk about the buffett rule. the idea of how wealth is taxed and work is taxed. and really at this kind of core philosophical level when he says, i earned it. yes, he did earn that money. i'm not saying he didn't earn that money. he earned that money. the question of should we have a tax system that taxes what his blind trustee is doing with investments at 15% while if you are changing the beds in a nursing home, you are taxed at a higher effective rate. i think that's a really intense, profound, philosophical question that i would like the american people talk more about. congresswoman, what do you think? >> i'm astounded by his whole approach and then he just came out and said his rate is really 50% because corporations are paying him. but a corporation pays their taxes. he pays his taxes and it's at 13.5%. and it comes out to roughly 54 -- his tax policy is just as bad, because it doesn't help the working man and woman. and what really astounded me was his offshore accounts. what kind of message does that send to the american people? if every american put their money in offshore account there wouldn't be any money in america. for someone who's running for president to have accounts in switzerland, in the cayman islands, in bermuda? i was astounded. i couldn't even believe that was true. i'd like to know how much of his money is offshore and what kind of message. if he says he's running for president. a president is supposed to lead by example. what kind of example is he giving the american people? passive income versus active income, put your money overseas, it's not creating jobs. it's not helping america. >> i think the example he would -- just to stand in for mitt romney momentarily, i think the answer he would give and he has given is i pay everything that's owed and not a dollar more. the fact is, this is par for the course. if you have a lot of money, you have a lot of money to pay people to engineer clever tax avoidance screens that are within the four corners of the law. i don't know if they're within the four corners of the law or not. i'm assuming for the moment there's no allegation of illegality. what i love about this story, it's making everyone stare into the dark heart at the core of our tax code. which is like this is what the tax code is. the tax code is a series of hurdles that people with enough resources, privilege and wealth can pay people to jump over for them. >> and is it right? >> no, it's not right. >> right. >> "the new york times" did an interesting thing. they asked tax experts in europe what romney would have paid in taxes had he been living there. and they found in france he would have paid an effective tax rate of about 40%. in the uk it would have been anywhere between 30% and 40%. germany, the strongest economy perhaps in the world, he would have paid an effective tax rate of 30% which is in fact what president obama and buffett suggested that people pay on capital gains. >> yes. josh, please respond to this. >> the 50 number he's throwing out isn't quite right. he is correct that you have to consider the corporate tax. >> let me stop you there for a second. let me play this, we have the sound of him. 15% is not right, it's more like 50% because of the corporate taxes. here it is. >> one of the reasons we have a lower tax rate on capital gains is because capital gains are also being taxed at the corporate level. as businesses earn profits that's taxed at 35%. then as they distribute those profits in dividends, that's taxed at 15% more. all totaled the tax rate is closer to 45% or 50%. >> this is funmentally correct. what you have happen, you have a corporation that has profits and those get taxed and they're distributed to shareholders as dividends or retained. the stock price goes up and that becomes a capital gain and that gets taxed. the effective tax rate on corporations isn't 35%. it's lower than that. 45% to 50% isn't right. it makes perfect sense to couldn't the these when you're trying to figure out what's the tax burden on the investment activities mitt romney is engaged in. >> let me bring in david cay johnston. he's my favorite tax reporter. i don't know who yours is. pulitzer prize winning person. david, i want you to respond to what mitt romney first said and what josh barro just said. this is will be the argument and "the wall street journal" editorial page made it as well. don't pay attention to the 15% because there's double taxation embedded in the tax code and he's actually paying a much higher rate. >> he would be if he's invested in c-corporations like general motors. if he's invested in corporations that are pass-through entities, the only tax collected is the individual tax that he's paying. and that's a very important issue. if you can organize your business like the coke brothers have, many of their businesses as limited liability companies or partnerships, the only tax paid is the individual tax. i would hope mr. romney would release to us information on the total tax actually paid on the investments flowing to him. by the way, next tuesday, chris, if you want to do another show, my column at reuters.com will have more you haven't heard yet about the romney taxes. >> that is a great tease for a tax -- that is the best tease for a tax column in the history of television. i'm going to go out on a limb and say. this equity question is the context for this whole discussion we're having. here is the president, gave the state of the union obviously, this week. he's talking about the buffett rule. the buffet rule essentially is an addition to the tax code that would make it so that people earning $1 million in income wouldn't pay an effective rate below 30%. obviously this is based on a famous warren buffett line on how he pays a lower effective rate than his secretary. his secretary was in fact a guest of the first lady at the state of the union. the president went out on the campaign trail this week and hammered home this message. here is he making the case. >> when it comes to paying our fair share, i believe we should follow the buffett rule. if you make more than $1 million a year, and i hope a lot of you do after you graduate, then you should pay a tax rate of at least 30%. on the other hand, if you decide to go into a less lucrative profession, if you decide to become a teacher and we need teachers -- [ applause ] if you decide to go into public service, if you decide to go into a helping profession, if you make less than $250,000 a year, which 98% of americans do, then your taxes shouldn't go up. >> heather, what do you think about the politics of the buffett rule and substantive policy? >> i think on the question -- the president is right to get to a question of values and equity and fairness. that's what resonates with people. josh and i can go back and forth and david cay johnston can go back and forth and argue what we're incentivizing, et cetera. it's a question of values. do we value work or wealth? when you say earned, that means something different. he deserved it, he married it, he worked for it, which is very strange when you think he's sitting right now. he is not working for bain in any way, shape or form and hasn't been for years, yet he's still not only collecting money from bain but collecting the tax loophole. fundamentally, it's a question of values. i think as long as the president stays at that level, it's going to be very hard for, you know, double taxation and capital gains to come back and really stick with the american people. >> ultimately we'll have to -- the interesting thing, right, is the transition from this question of values to actual legislation. and what that would look like. i think that's where all the questions start to arise. david cay johnston, i want you to stick around. we'll take a break and talk more about taxes and fairness after this. don't our dogs deserve to eat fresher less processed foods just like we do introducing freshpet healthy recipes of fresh meat and fresh veggies so fresh the only preservative we use is the fridge freshpet fresh food for fido i refer to her as "that woman with the great gums." as jill's dentist, i know that her gums are a foundation of a healthy smile. jill knows that, too -- so she uses crest pro-health clinical gum protection toothpaste. it helps eliminate plaque at the gum line, helping prevent gingivitis. it's even clinically proven to help reverse it in just 4 weeks. and it protects these other areas dentists check most. crest pro-health clinical gum protection. because healthy smiles are built on healthy gums. life opens up when you do. the sleep number bed. the magic of this bed is that you're sleeping on something that conforms to your individual shape. you can adjust it to whatever your needs are. so whatever you feel like, the sleep number bed's going to provide it for you. and now, the company that redefined sleep is redefining memory foam. save $400 on our all-new memory foam bed. and at our white sale, stock up and save on our exclusive bedding collection. only at the sleep number store, where queen mattresses start at just $699. in what passes for common sense. used to be we socked money away and expected it to grow. then the world changed... and the common sense of retirement planning became anything but common. fortunately, td ameritrade's investment consultants can help you build a plan that fits your life. take control by opening a new account or rolling over an old 401(k) today, and we'll throw in up to $600. how's that for common sense? we're playing "you wait so long" because you are waiting so long for the loophole to be struck from the tax code. i want to talk to you about how you transfer the conversation about the equity in the tax code, the debate that's emerged around mitt romney's taxes and the buffett rule and the president is pursuing, into the actual tax code. that to me seems the problem. our tax rates, our capital gains have gone down over time, our top marginal rate has gone down, percentage of gdp paid in corporate taxes is at a 50 or 60-year low. the actual policy that's happening is the tax burden of the wealthiest americans has been shrinking at the same time that every single poll robustly shows over and over and over again people support higher taxes on the wealthy and when you deal with a loophole like the carried interest loophole which allows them to claire income as capital gains and pay 15%. josh said during the break he thought it was not a defensible policy. rupert murdoch of all people was tweeting about how it's not defensible. yet it persists. how do you transfer both into the actual tax code? >> well, it's difficult. it took the new york delegation seven years to pass the 9/11 health and compensation act that we should take care of the people who took care of us. i have great respect for anything that can pass the united states congress and get what i call that fragile flower of consensus. but in tax policy, we have pa passed numerous times closing loopholes, such as the carried interest. and it dies in the senate. the interest spoke about changing the tax code so we have insent sieves to bring jobs back to america and erase the incentives to outsource and send jobs overseas. that's common sense. why are we giving corporations a tax break to send american jobs overseas? but we pass it in the house and it fails in the senate. >> why does it fail in the senate? >> you need to get the votes. we live in a democracy and you need to get 60 votes. we should just go back to a majority of votes in the senate. but even one of the fights that are before congress right now is the payroll tax cut that would give working families roughly $1,500 a year. this is significant. to working men and women. and candidate romney called this a band-aid. he's opposed to band-aid approaches. what is he for? he's for all these loopholes that are benefiting him. >> he's for superating wounds, i think. >> it's something we keep working on. right now we're trying to extend the payroll tax cut for a year. it is a huge fight. and unemployment insurance, for those who have lost their job, through no fault of their own, for every job there's six people who can fill it. we need to -- this money also is a stimulus, it goes right back into the economy. we're trying to pass that now and having tremendous difficulty. >> josh you want to respond? >> i find this conversation in the broader context to be a little bit funny. we're here on this progressive show. >> i don't know why you'd say that, i play it right down the middle. >> one concern with tax policy is distributional effects, who should pay more. >> yes. >> the purpose of taxation is to fund the government. so the government can do useful things. >> also to punish people like mitt romney. but continue. >> okay. but this is the question. >> off message. >> off message heather says. continue. >> the president talks about in his speech, we need a buffett rule. if you make less than $250,000 a year, you shouldn't have to pay more in taxes. that raises about $37 billion a year in new revenue, which is not -- closes less than 5% of the annual budget gap. >> i agree with what you're saying, josh. that we are going to need more revenue. that's your point, right? aggressives should be saying we need more revenue, it's true. >> there's an unwillingness among progressives to defend the idea the government is worth paying for. >> below $250,000. >> i completely agree with you quarterback josh. >> i also completely agree with you, josh. >> fair enough. >> here's the thing. the president decided to make this argument about taxes on the question of fairness. that's the framework. buffett versus the secretary. >> right. >> i think he was a little thin in his state of the union address on the question of values. we could also look at the budget as a value statement. we want to do these things, schools, energy. i think there he was a little light compared to other state of the union addresses. >> david, do you agree with josh? i tend to also, that the idea that the long-term sort of -- the long-term fiscal security of the country can be -- can be maintained without taxes going up on anyone who makes $250,000 or less is not tenable? >> we're beginning to have to raise taxes on everyone. and the reason we're going to have to do this is because ronald reagan got elected promising a balanced budget, did the opposite. george h.w. bush ran up deficits. bill clinton was bringing them down and then we came along with, oh, we're going to have budget surpluses as far as the eye can see and the federal debt doubled. when the house of cards collapsed we had this disaster. we should note, however, that since president obama came to office, the projected deficit has gone from above 1.6 trillion this year, it will be under 1 trillion. but, yes, everybody needs to pay higher taxes if they're going to have the level of government they have now and we are terribly shortchanging education, research, we are using up our infrastructure which will make us poorer and doings things like not inspecting food properly so our death rates from food-borne illness are far above those in europe. >> david, i'm going to ask you how you would explain our current tax code and how it got to be the way it is to an alien visitor from another planet right after we take this break. we asked real people if they'd help us with an experiment for febreze fabric refresher. they agreed. 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[ male announcer ] sustainable solutions. fedex. solutions that matter. with listerine® whitening plus restoring rinse. it's the only listerine® that gets teeth two shades whiter and makes tooth enamel two times stronger. get dual-action listerine® whitening rinse. building whiter, stronger teeth. so josh, you just said something to me and i want you to say on air and i want to have a chance to defend myself. david, i'm going to ask you about the tax code. maybe we'll go to you in response to this as well. what were you saying. >> which thing. >> you basically said, if you agree that taxes will have to go up on everyone, why are you spending the first two blocks of the show talking about this fairness question? >> i think the president has spent the first three years of his administration talking about this question, saying the government will do more and don worry, someone else will pay for it. to pay for all the things the government does today, let alone new programs, you'll need new tax money from everybody. i don't think liberals are making the case that the government is worth paying more in taxes. >> that's a fair point. david, when we talk about the state of the tax code and all the combined trends that i discussed at the beginning in terms of the decline of the top marginal rate, the decline of the capital gains rate, the decline of the average corporate tax rate and the effective rate for people making average money, all things that in tandem and together represent a tremendous lack of equity in the system, what is your short story to someone who lands here from another planet about why the tax code is the way it is. >> i give a lecture where i imagine i'm a cosmic journalist visiting earth and my first report back about economics is that it's very clear what people love more than anything is taxes. it's about 40% of the world economy. they must love taxes if it's such a large share. but in the -- in those countries that have the highest and most rigorous tax systems, they have the most civilization, the least violence. the fewest divorces, the best adjusted societies. in the united states, however, the dominant country, economically, they have this curious policy where they tell people that people at the top pay this heavy tax burden when in fact the system actually redistributes upward to the very, very super wealthy. why do people not see this? because the class that we're all in of prosperous people are very heavily taxed and it's hard for us to imagine that people way above us pay very small tax and in some cases no tax at all, because congress allows it. >> why does congress allow it, though? >> i disagree with josh on one point. >> please. >> i disagree with josh on one point. >> please. >> people who are out of work paid for their benefits. >> you're saying in terms of unemployment. >> they paid a tax. it's on your paycheck. >> yes. >> that's exactly right. they paid for those benefits. they didn't cause this problem. they shouldn't be punished by the people who made money off it through the government. >> they purchased -- the way we should be clear, the way that unemployment, the reason it's called unemployment insurance is because it's insurance. you pay a premium when you're working and collect the benefits when the event happens as if a fire took your house. but why is it the case that -- i mean, why do we have such a hard time -- why do we have such a hard time translating common sense or basic values of equity or even being able to integrate rupert murdoch, josh barro, david frum and everyone else's idea that we should get rid of the carried interest loophole? that seems to be the bigger issue. we have to figure out what are the actual mechanics preventing us from achieving good tax policy. >> the right wing has laid down this narrative attack. they're always increasing. when you look at surveys, americans say taxes are higher than five years ago, ten years ago. you ask michele bachmann about tax codes and they said they want to go back to the reagan tax code, which would be great. it's actually higher. it's more aggressive than clinton or obama. we have this perception that taxes are always increasing, which is untrue. >> and the republican majority, most of them in congress, have signed pledges, no new taxes. no new taxes. so they won't vote for them and they have the majority. >> josh? >> i this the reason the carried interest tax treatment survives is that it's actually not that large a tax issue in the big picture. >> sure. >> you say why can't we have a good tax policy, why can't we tax carried interest properly? it will raise an extra $2 billion, $3 billion a year. we're left with a $497 billion deficit. >> but of course, the reason i raise it, it's low-hanging fruit. the point is, fine, yes, does it solve the federal deficit? no. >> about who pays for elections. let's be fair. >> thank you, heather. i've been leading everybody to the water but nobody wanted to take a drink. >> we're talking about democracy now. >> the link, my organization was founded on the link between political inequality and economic inequality. we are sitting here at the absolute pinnacle of seeing how every single time there is a policy that advantages basically the top 1% of the 1%, which is who donates to elections, who funds the superpacs, who funds individual candidates, you cannot get traction. there is a political -- larry bartel says the bottom 30% of the income distribution, their desires, their political desires have exactly zero impact. >> yes. >> on their elected officials outcome. >> congresswoman, do you feel that every day? >> to her point about elections, with citizens united you had one person, adelson buying one election in south carolina, possibly buying an election in florida. when person donated 5 million to newt gingrich that was -- he was a million dollars in debt. and literally, changed that election in south carolina. his wife has done the same. and this is -- if there was ever a constitutional amendment that we should pass, it's when to roll back citizens united, because it is allowing this few wealthy people to literally buy elections in america. >> congresswoman, you teed that up perfectly for me. we actually had going to talk about that issue later in the show. pulitzer prize-winning tax and income winner, david cay johnston. our pregame show for tomorrow's sunday morning political talk shows is right after this. 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richard kim, what would you ask of whom? >> i would newt gingrich whose surrogates have been attacking romney for being a vulture capitalist and tearing up these companies through bain capital. how does that square with his plan to reduce the capital gains tax to 0%. has he had a certain change of heart? and how is he going to overcome the perception that he's an erratic candidate when he holds these two completely incompatible views. >> on the debate on cnn the other night, they never got that that simple fact, that gingrich's proposed tax policy is more regressive and kinder to mitt romney's policy than mitt romney own policy, which is kinder than obama's proposal. congresswoman, what would you ask of whom if you got to play journalist? >> i would ask senator mccain, when he was vetting governor romney as a possible running mate for vice president -- >> good question. >> and he was reviewing the 20 years of tax returns that he gave him to review, i'd like to know if included in those tax returns was all of these offshore accounts that governor romney just disclosed in cayman islands, bermuda and switzerland. and i'd like to ask him, what he thought about that. i'd like to ask him what he thought about the report that we lose roughly $100 billion a year in revenue in our country which we could invest in jobs and building the middle class. and this was all lost. and i'd like to ask him, was that the reason that he turned him down? and is governor romney -- we like to think of our presidential candidates and our presidents of living and leading by example. and what kind of example does governor romney give the citizens of america when he is putting his money through whatever means, offshore in all of these different accounts. >> i think john mccain would answer that isn't the reason. the reason is, i frankly cannot stand the guy. heather mcghee, what would you ask? >> this is a problem, right. newt gingrich and paul ryan will be on fox news sunday. fox news does not have any interest in stirring the pot. but i would love to have gingrich and romney, ryan face off about the medicare plan, that romney's -- sorry, paul ryan's medicare plan which gingrich came out of the gates attacking and is now walked back. it's a few days before the florida primary. i want to see him say what he thinks about medicare. >> you referred to the plan as right wing social engineering and got killed for it. josh barro? >> i want to talk to john boehner. remember john boehner? >> yes. >> it was so big in december. it's like we've all forgotten about it. the payroll tax holiday and extended unemployment benefits will expire in a month. >> yes, absolutely. >> i was struck during the state of the union. the president did have a line calling for an extension of the payroll tax cuts but did not mention unemployment benefits. i feel hurt because i've been defending the president on that issue and if he's abandoning his position, i feel a little bit left out to dry. >> left out to dry. >> story of the week, coming up next. i love that my daughter's part fish. but when she got asthma, all i could do was worry ! specialists, lots of doctors, lots of advice... and my hands were full. i couldn't sort through it all. with unitedhealthcare, it's different. we have access to great specialists, and our pediatrician gets all the information. everyone works as a team. and i only need to talk to one person about her care. we're more than 78,000 people looking out for 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. the sleep number bed. the magic of this bed is that you're sleeping on something that conforms to your individual shape. you can adjust it to whatever your needs are. so whatever you feel like, the sleep number bed's going to provide it for you. and now, the company that redefined sleep is redefining memory foam. save $400 on our all-new memory foam bed. and at our white sale, stock up and save on our exclusive bedding collection. only at the sleep number store, where queen mattresses start at just $699. laces? 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[ male announcer ] now there's a mileage card that offers special perks on united, like a free checked bag, united club passes, and priority boarding. thanks. ♪ okay. what's your secret? ♪ [ male announcer ] the new united mileageplus explorer card. get it and you're in. my story of the week, democracy for billionaires. just a few weeks before the south carolina primary, not only was newt gingrich lagging in the polls, he didn't have the resources to compete with the deep pocketed mitt romney. but then came sheldon adelson to the rescue. the multibillionaire casino owner, right-wing donor and personal friend of gingrich gave him a whopping $5 million which then he used to run a series of devastatingly effective attack ads. this year, we learned he was doubling down on his investment in gingrich with adelson's wife, giving another $5 million to make him competitive in florida. i don't think newt gingrich will be the nominee. he would move into the west wing with the direct and personal debt to a lone billionaire unmatched in recent memory if he moves into the white house. if this is what politics looks like, it seems altogether important and proper to ask who is sheldoned a adelson. he's a huge republican donner with a history of suing journalists. his fortune comes from his ownership of casinos. his most lucrative idea is that vegas could be a destination for business travelers and trade conventions but the lion's share of his company's profits come from the casinos he owns in asia, including several on the chinese island of macao. he was granted an extremely rare and lucrative gambling license by the chinese state, which is more or less a license to print money. according to adelson's own testimony in a civil suit bought by richard suen, beijing's mayor asked him for help with a resolution pending in congress that opposed china's olympic bid on the grounds of its human rights record. the president of adelson's company, bill wider in, told the court he made an immediate phone call to congressman tom delay. called him later saying the legislation was off the table. he was able to tell the beijing mayor, quote, the bill will never see the light of day, don't worry about it. his spokesperson told a reporter he doesn't recall the conversation. he got the license and edged out bigger casino developers. today his net worth is $21.5 billion. this is the heroic job creator at work. working his influence with the politicians he funds to protect the reputation of the chinese regime so they will grant him a state license for gambling that will make him billions of dollars. if that's not the american dream at work, i don't know what is. he's made a name for himself. shelley berkeley who worked for adelson, wrote the more i encouraged cooperation with workers, the more i incurred mr. adelson's wrath. he plotted vendettas against anyone who he believed was in his way. he used his money and position to bulliny opponent into submission. adelson said he fired berkeley for violating attorney/client privilege. it's opening was met with union picketers on the sidewalk outside. he sued to have them removed arguing because the sidewalk was technically private property it was not subject to first amendment protections. luckily, he lost. most troubling are adelson's views on foreign policy. he's most focused on israel where his wife was born. his views on the middle east place him far outside a mainstream that's quite far to the right. he does not believe in a two-state solution, telling jewish week last year the two-state solution is a stepping stone for the destruction of israel and the jewish people. he even apacked apac from the right when it circulated a letter in congress urging members to fund the plen authority. the new yorker reports that he referred to the widely praised, respected and peaceful palestinian authority prime minister as a, quote, terrorist. and it quotes one prominent israeli journalist saying of adelson, when it comes to his views on the conflict. perhaps most worryingly, he's a strenuous advocate of war with iran. you'll notice of course, adelson's views on foreign policy aren't very different than newt gingrich's. in the daily beast, his right word was tracked over the years as his relationship with adelson developed. culminating in the position this year that the palestinians are an invented people. whether or not he comes by his dangerous and morally bankrupt views honestly or whether he views them as a strategic means to keep the checks coming, the point is less gingrich and adelson than the new frontier they are forging together. it means such a pairing was inevitable and is mostlily common in the future. how much would you be willing to spend to own the president of the united states? according to "forbes," the $10 million adelson dropped on gingrich is what his biggest hotel casino can make in profit in one day. what if he decided to go for it and gave gingrich's superpac $100 million? it's a testament to the norms that this has been a protracted battle between billionaires. perhaps the future of presidential elections will be like actual horse races. billionaires choose their candidates of choose and hire jockeys, that is campaign staffs and operatives to ride them. we'll have an active betting market on the outcome among the masses who watch the wealthy race their play things. that's a vision. if things don't change, that may be where we're headed. more on mr. adelson, right after this. ♪ [ male announcer ] from our nation's networks... ♪ ...to our city streets... ♪ ...to skies around the world... ♪ ...northrop grumman's security solutions are invisibly at work, protecting people's lives... 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[ male announcer ] ...without their even knowing it. that's the value of performance. northrop grumman. for fastidious librariane of performance. emily skinner, each day was fueled by thorough preparation for events to come. well somewhere along the way, emily went right on living. but you see, with the help of her raymond james financial advisor, she had planned for every eventuality. ...which meant she continued to have the means to live on... ...even at the ripe old age of 187. life well planned. see what a raymond james advisor can do for you. what do these multimillionaires expect? you give someone 5 million bucks -- >> they want their candidate to win. >> there has to be a so what at the end of that. if you win, what does adelson get out of it? >> he knows i'm very pro-israel. that's the center value of his life. he is very worried that israel is going to not survive. >> newt gingrich talking to ted koppel on nbc's rock center about the terms of this relationship. david cay johnston, we still have you. you mote a book about gambling. i believe you interviewed adelson about it. tell us about how he built his fortune. >> sheldon is one of the most visionary businessmen i've met. trump avoiding bankruptcy, steve wynn who knows the business. they are pip squeaks compared to sheldon. sheldon had the vision of creating a convention center and bringing business and he parlayed his money brilliantly and his political connections. his casino employs 21,000 people. it is a way for the chinese government to get untaxed money and it is bringing in so much money along with the other casinos that the government can't spend it as fast as it comes in. do you ever hear sheldon complain about his 48% tax. he got rich because government made him rich. government gave him a privilege, a license, and we need to remember that government is instrumental in determining who gets rich and who is kept in poverty. >> one of the things -- one of the points i want to make in that piece and i think the bigger point is whatever adelson's particular beliefs are and i don't really agree with hardly any of them. the bigger issue is the most post citizens united super pac we operate in. in some ways it doesn't -- i can't understand why people aren't doing more of this. someone made the point to me it's a simple point, simple math. >> they will, they will. >> right, they will. i think this is the frontier. adelson's donation of gingrich is like giving someone ten bucks. i don't think it counts as an investment. that's like a tip, right? so at a certain point, you wonder when we are going to see a hundred million dollars spent. it's worth quite a bit to have the president of the united states, you know, owe you a favor. >> doing more of what, though? what has sheldon adelson got for his money. gingrich won the south carolina primary and imploding in florida and the reason is he is an unsuitable candidate. he will not be the nominee let alone president. >> counterexamples 94% of the time the candidate with more money wins. but, more importantly, i don't think it's who wins. >> adelson has won because he shoved the entire debate on israel and none of the winning future ads is about. you would think sheldon's key issue in his life is venture capitalism but his key issue is israel. he not only has shoved newt gingrich to the right and om romney adopted a position right to netanyahu. at the debate in december, romney attacked him. in the last debate, gingrich doubled down on that and said -- romney didn't say anything. in fact, said obama threw israel under the bus. >> plus, incredibly provocative, dangerous notion you move the embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem. that is gingrich's platform and now that is -- that is given balan ballast. >> it actually hasn't. that is the interesting thing. in fact, the only moment of core between romney and gingrich on the last debate was on israel. gingrich turned to romney saying i agree with you completely. >> the real issue is what allowed this to happen. what allowed this extreme amount of money to go into politics when we have been working with some form of campaign finance my entire life and it's the citizens united supreme court decision which allowed billionaires and corporations to use their resources, their money, to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens and it is very undemocratic and i would say, frankly, dangerous. >> david, you want to weigh in with something? >> well, you know, the examples of peek like checky who didn't get elected in california. politics is venture capitalism to sheldon adelson. what we have done with citizens united is gone from risky venture capital you may donate and not get your person elected to mezzanine finance. we don't hear from the voices of people who could change the political debated unless people with a lot of money backed them. that is part of the problem. we are limiting who gets into the debate. >> we had a very spirited and fascinating conversation i thought last week when eliot spitzer was here and he was defending them more or less. >> wow. >> essentially saying the distinction before citizens united was a distinction without a difference which is to say this. okay, you're the group. the group citizens united which is the group the named party in the lawsuit wanted to release dvds that were essentially attacking hk, right? it was clearly done for electoral purposes but just releasing a dvd. spitzer said what is difference than that than buying a newspaper? what is fascinating the case of sheldon adelson forces us to look at that distinction. there is no citizens united in israel because he just bought the third largest newspaper. is influence a product of the specifics of the law or is influence a product of the massive inequality? if you have that much money you'll find a way to influence politics no matter what. i think adelson is challenging in that report. david johnson, thanks so much for sitting in this morning. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> we will be right back. 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[ male announcer ] yes, it is. that's the cold truth! all right good morning. i'm chris hayes. i'm here with richard kim of the nation and democratic congresswoman carolyn maloney. we are in the thick of a conversation which recurs on this show which is money and politics and citizens united and the role that billionaire casino she would oen -- sheldon adelson is playing in the gop presidential election.would oen playing in the gop presidential electiooen -- sheldon adelson i playing in the gop presidential electio-- sheldon adelson is pln the gop presidential electioshe the gop presidential election. >> you can either have democracy in this country or have wealth concentrated in the hands of very few but you can't have both. i think that what we need to do is twofold. one, we need to get money out. that's not just through reversing citizens united. it's not we issue a rich robust democracy in 2009, right? we need to get money out by both amending the constitution and say money isn't speech and get people in and partly through public financing so that we are encouraging small dollar donations of the kind we saw in 2008 but that still didn't affect the vast majority of people. and we need to say that there shouldn't be as many barriers to voting. this isn't just a money problem. but it's a participation problem as well. >> congresswoman critics of campaign finance will say it is impossible, by definition, for a sitting elective legislative body to pass campaign finance that doesn't help incumbents stay incumbents because they have their interest at heart. any campaign finance system that is passed out of the united states congress is going to be essentially an incumbent racket. how do you respond? >> i disagree. campaign finance laws that passed in city governments and in the federal government limited contributions and, therefore, i would say financial influence in politics. this decision came from supreme court. the supreme court basically said that corporations could give as much as they want, individuals could give as much as they want. that really drummed out democracy. you saw with sheldon adelson. he literally bought an election in south carolina. governor romney was two digits ahead until he came in with this 5 million. mr. gingrich was a million in debt. and totally flipped that election. he could do the same thing in florida. i don't know what is happening there but -- >> can i ask you a personal question. how does this affect your psychology from a day-to-day level, how does this change? do you think about who -- what super pac is going to swoop in and run ads defenagainst you if vote the wrong way on something? how does it get into the head of a congress person? >> money always plays a tremendous role in politics. the bill that i passed in the last congress was -- president obama was one of the first bills he signed into law was the credit card holders bill of rights. the pugh foundation came out and said this bill alone cost industry $10 billion in one year by stopping abusive practices that were unfair like raising rights any time, retroactively on your balance. many people in the industry funded a candidate against me. so there is always this in there. i would support having no money in politics, having discussions, putting your positions out and having shows like yours, allow all of the candidates to be on there and let the people make a decision. >> that's a constitutional amendment i get behind. every politician has to come on and can only speak on "up with chris hayes" saturday and sunday mornings on msnbc. richard? something you want to say? >> i think when you look at these candidates it also reflects that you need money to enter politics. not just to sort of buy ads like adelson is doing. mitt romney 0.006%. newt gingrich is a multimillionaires many times over. so that barrier has increased and when you look down at congress at the senate the number of millionaires and multimillionaires in congress is at an all-time high. >> i was going to say that is what is so great about clean elections and fair elections that we have in arizona and maine and other states, because wait recesses can become candidates for congress. that is part of it. it's this idea that good people who serve their community in a million different ways that aren't millionaires don't at all have the ticket to even enter. >> that barrier to entry cannot be stressed enough. you have to know a lot of rich people to run for congress and the most likely way to know a lot of rich people is to have a lot of money. >> relatively very easy to get on the ballot. in new york state you can just -- to run for congress go out and get 1,500 people in your party to sign a petition that they would like you to run and you're on the ballot. >> the ballot is not the barrier. the barrier is to campaign effectively in even a senate race example. >> i want to play out the thought a little bit in terms of the next iteration of a sheldon adelson. let's say someone says i like the candidate. let's say it's someone on the left. let's say there's a delightful class trader with a lot of money burning a hole in his pocket who wants to fund, you know, a liberal candidate, right? gives him a hundred million dollars or a billion dollars. i mean, there are people that can do that. josh, what do you think would be the consequence of that? does that trouble you at all to sort of imagine that? >> well, i think the thing is that it's much more expensive to buy unpopular policy than popular policy. >> sure. >> so i think -- >> but you can pay the premium. >> but the question is when do you reach that point of diminishing returns? again, i think what sheldon adelson we are seeing the limit of money in politics. no matter how much money you throw to a candidate who is bad enough you can't get them elect. i think it matters at the margin in various instances. i think the problem with this idea that you need to get money out of politics and that money isn't -- first of all, it costs money to run a newspaper. there isn't this clean line between, you know, what is money being thrown at the block and what is ordinary discourse that happens to cost money to get done. but i think that when you impose restrictions on money in politics, i think do you end up with the sort of incumbent protection racket. the reason is when you make it more difficult for people to get their message out by paying for it, the advantage goes to people who have the existing presence as office holders who have existing links with the media. >> that has not been the case in arizona and maine and not the case that incumbent re-election rates went up in either of those places. >> maine is a place, what do you have? 5,000 residents in a legislative district or 4,000, i think? it's necessarily a different less financially intensive thing than runing in a district with 700,000. >> you're complaining on a. you're basically saying that newspapers cost money to run but the people who are -- whose views are being could have had in the newspapers are not paying to run it. there is that. there is also the idea, i think you're forgetting about the point that public financing is about more than just getting money out of politics. it's fundamentally leveling the playing field in a way that i think gets at your core -- >> i think the idea of getting -- i think the idea of getting money out of politics, i don't necessarily support. in the sense that i think it's good to have a lot of money and speech. >> but you support a level playing field. >> i do. the fact of the matter is -- >> you want people to spend live time talking about an election and that time is going to cost money in whatever way. right some if you want to have a platform in which people have a national network, right? in some way there is resources dedicated to the proliferation of ideas throughout an electoraelect to electorate in the campaign. the source of the money and the way the source of that money creates an improper dependency of people who benefit from that source of the money. >> it's not this maturing candidate problem and not that that will buy you a candidate. >> which is what i'm imagining but i think it's possible. >> it is possible too. but as sheldon adelson has shown what $10 million buys is -- on the issue so that either candidate has to state a position closer to him. not they are buying candidates. they are buying the whole field. >> also -- i want to stress, which you spend the 5 million but there is the threat of the other 50. >> exactly. >> the point -- believe me, that gets in people's heads. >> sheldon, we should -- chris! talking about sheldon adelson. you should also know who is buying whom. and under the citizens united decision, they do not have to even disclose who is contributing to the super pacs. we know about sheldon adelson because it became public. the huge super pacs are hundreds of millions of dollars, we don't know who is trying to influence and at the very least we should have access to who is making these contributions. >> the journalist who is reporting cost general stanley mccrystal his job joins us here on the set after this. the employee of the month isss... the new spark card from capital one. spark miles gives me the most rewards of any small business credit card. the spark card earns double miles... so we really had to up our game. with spark, the boss earns double miles on every purchase, every day. that's setting the bar pretty high. owning my own business has never been more rewarding. coming through! 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[ laughs ] on june 21st, 2010, "rolling stone" magazine published an article filled with insulting remarks by american military leaders in afghanistan towards their civilian commanders. two days later, president obama made this announcement at the white house. >> today, i accepted general stanley mcchrystal's resignation as commander of the international assistance force in afghanistan. the conduct represented in the recent published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. it undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system. and it erodes the trust that's necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in afghanistan. >> "rolling stone article was written by journalist michael hastings. he dives deeper into the afghanistan story in his new book, "the operators." michael, a great pleasure to have you here. i will say this. this book is a fantastic read. it is so well done. i tore through it. we have authors on the show. let me go a little more. give you a little more. no, we have authors on the show a lot and i try to read the books or a part of it. but enough to pretend i read the whole thing. i tore through this whole thing and it was just -- it was fantastic testament. >> amazing to hear. i want to say it's actually quite an honor to be on the show. i'm so used to live tweeting your show with a #up that i don't know how i will follow. i appreciate it. thank you so much. >> let's start off that clip. one of the things i think is fascinating about the book is that i think probably partly because of the publicity that article got and the way it affected the world, right? you couldn't just be an observer any more. you were our participant in our afghanistan policy at a certain point because it was your article that got the guy running afghanistan fired. talk to me a little bit about -- just the experience of i have never done that as a reporter. it would be awesome. i would like to say i have a collection of people who i brought down on my wall. what was that like, that experience when that happened? >> the goal of course, was never to bring anyone down. >> of course. >> it was to sort of highlight what i thought was this disastrous policy. in the book we expand on the inner circle of the boozy, crazy, you know, wild ride. so how the book is structured, i'm going to go literary deep here for your show here. the way i envisioned structuring the book is have one narrative of first person event hang out with the guys and policy narrative. the climax of the book the two narratives, bam, collide. i'm in this very strange position of being, you know, part of the story. at the time when it actually broke, i was in kandahar which is in southern afghanistan on an air base hanging out with all of these helicopter pilots doing a story about apache helicopter pilots. and one of the soldiers came up to me and said, hey, man, you hear about this crazy story in "rolling stone" it was like i was like, yeah, i wrote that one. and he is like, no, expletive, expletive. guys, come over here. it was this incredible experience where throughout the next few days, every soldier i'd run into i print out a copy and talk about running into someone there who was a big fan of rachel maddow and i had a rachel maddow hat and i gave it to her. my 15 minutes of celebrity scene played out on the way. >> i want stay on the theme of the relationship between the press and the military because that's kind of undercurrent. part of what happens here, you are sort of brought into the inner circle of mcchrystal's team. one of the big questions, i think, that emerged when the story happened was how did they let this happen? i mean, why were they saying these things around a journalist on the record, right? which they were. they didn't even contest it after it came out. you give, i think, an explanation partly in the book. what is is your understanding of why it was they were saying these things around you? >> i think the simplest explanation is they wanted to be on the cover of "rolling stone" you snow? i think that is part of it. also this relationship with the media. general mcchrystal this was not his first major magazine story so they had certain expectations about what -- when they say to you, oh, we will not tell you what to write, hang out with us and write the story you want to write. they were thinking that they would get exactly what they had gotten before which was this mcchrystal is a super hero. >> he runs 90 miles in the morning and eats one meal a week, right? >> there was this in our story which was sort of, in many ways, a response to that sort of journalism there was an implicit criticism of that type of journalism. what happened after the story hit that became explicit from other folks and that is when there was i've had some tensions with my colleagues in the washington press corps. >> what is interesting about it, i think is there a psychological, emotional to this. through your eyes, we come to kind of like this crazy crew. they seem somewhat reckless, risk-seeking, but fun and kind of smart and smart alecky and total devotion to the general. we can see that you like them. >> yeah. >> and then have you to go home or go back and sit at your computer and do what you know is going to get them all in a lot of trouble, if not fired, right? was that hard? >> you know, look. look. i think like it's -- yeah, the famous -- quote. i address this in the book. i say, you know, and i quote sort of a mentor of mine who said, if it's a game of seduction it's like seducing a prostitute. what that means is in this case, they were very willing to sort of get the publicity and there are risks that come with that whenever you let someone in. i will say i loved hanging out with these guys. it was this amazing experience. they are all sort of hypermotivated talent. but there is also this sort of darker side to it all too which leads them to this ten-year war. these are the exact type of people you'd imagine who would be running the war after ten years of secret, shadowy -- >> i felt the case you were making in the book the reason they did this was these are people that had been fighting war for ten straight years, and had essentially detached from the civilian world in a certain way. they inhabited a sphere in which you say mcchrystal spent no more than 30 days with his wife ten straight years. talk a little bit about the civilian military gap and that what that means in a decade of war. >> it's huge. it's so huge. remember, you know, president obama comes in. he's never served. he made his career off being against the iraq war. who was for the iraq war? the pentagon was for the iraq war, right? the pentagon is infested by sort of republicans. and, you know, a u.s. official said to me about general mcchrystal, mcchrystal doesn't understand civilians and doesn't even understand their use. like he doesn't really like get -- it's actually kind of an interesting story this person i spoke to had worked closely to general mcchrystal. he said general mcchrystal is tough on the military people around him, but he sort of nice to civilians. and, at first, i thought like that was sort of funny. it's because like he sees no value or like he not even going to bother being tough on civilians. look. he is a fascinating character. i think in many ways historic figure what he did the past ten years is sort of coming to light now. i enjoyed being with him. >> let's talk about the past, present and future of our war in afghanistan after this break. my patients, you want to hear you've done a good job. that's why i recommend a rinse like crest pro-health multi-protection. it helps you get a better dental check-up. so be ready for your next dental check-up. try any crest pro-health rinse. [ male announcer ] red lobster's four course seafood feast is back. get soup, salad, cheddar bay biscuits, dessert and choose one of 7 entrees. four courses for only $15. offer ends soon. i'm jody gonzalez, red lobster manager and i sea food differently. from this position of strength, we begun to wind down the war in afghanistan 10,000 of our troops have come home and 23,000 more will leave by the end of this summer. this transition to afghan lead will continue and we will build an enduring part with afghanistan so it is never again a source of attacks against america. >> that's the president speaking in the state of the union about afghanistan. what did you think about what the president said about afghanistan and our involvement there in the state of the union? >> i mean, the headline to me and it has been since the summer is the war is over. i mean, and how strange that sounds because we are going to be fighting it for three more years, but when the president says the tide of war is resedding it means -- the white house they call it the glide path out. it's going to take a few years to get there. diplomatic negotiations are finally seem to be getting some traction. but, yeah, i think, i mean, we were talking in the break about the distancing between the civil and military side of things. i think this is one of those strange things where i can sit here and say with a straight face the war is over when hundreds of more americans will die in fighting but that's what it is. >> elaborate on that. 2,800 u.s. casualties in afghanistan the ten years or so. we have that figure up there. we spent some time trying to find good estimates of civilian casualties and more difficult to find than iraq where there was a series of cluster surveys which is the best way of kind of determining increased death rates. that aside, when you say the words -- i guess my question is do you believe that it actually is on a glide path or is that -- >> no, it is. i can't imagine -- well, i can imagine a political circumstance where it happens but i think it would be very difficult for either republican nor democratic president to sell the country on reescalating a war in afghanistan. i think once the withdrawal starts, it's henry kissinger's famous line from vietnam. they are like salted peanuts. i think it's a positive thing and we need to get there. the la two years i think is a failure of strategy and essentially moving to vice president biden's original idea a small footprint and use the special forces which president obama has demonstrated he can use quite effectively and get out of the nation of -- >> when we say the war is drawing down it's the war of tens of thousands of troops. what about the second front which is the nato night raids and and the drone strikes in pakistan. that war seems to be a permanent war. are you concerned about that, michael? >> i'm concerned about it. i think that -- this gets into the larger issue of sort of the permanent national security state and how do you roll that back? and i think, you know, president -- i think one of the sort of things that has happened to us is we have got stuck in post-9/11 thinking, spell on foreign policy where the gross overreaction to september 11th we are still feeling the effects to do. as the tide of war recedes, what are the legacies we are going to find abandoned on the beach to mangle some metaphors. >> congresswoman, michael said the last two years were a failed strategy in afghanistan. do you agree with that? >> i'd like to point out our president said he would bring the troops back from iraq in that war and he did. he ordered the mission that gave this country a collective sigh of relief when osama bin laden is no longer with us. he has a strategy to bring the troops back from afghanistan and he will. he has a strong record in this category. just yesterday, vice president biden was speaking to the democratic caucus and he told a very interesting story on how the president made the decision to go after osama bin laden and to call for that mission. i could share it it with you, you'd like to hear it. >> yeah. we weren't there. >> the vice president said that they had a situation room where they were going over whether or not they should go after this man that they didn't have any proof that it was osama bin laden. he had everyone there. the joint chief of staff, state department and defense department. they were going around the room and giving their advice to him. he said i want to hear from all of you. and panetta was the only one who said, go for it. we have circumstantial evidence, we're not sure, but it's strong enough we should go for it. every single person in the room gave a statistic well, i think it should be 41% or 58% or 51%. it got to the vice president. he said i didn't know there were so many economists in the room. he said that he recommended to the president that he should not go in, that they did not have enough information, the vice president. >> wow. >> he said i'm going to sleep on it. the next morning, he very quietly told an aide, execute the mission. >> wow. >> so this shows how really courageous our president is. his whole presidency has hinged on this decision. if he had made a mistake, his presidency would have been over. >> it also shows that no one listens to joe biden. >> i disagree. i disagree. >> i'm joking. that's a joke obviously. >> i also would argue that part of the president's confidence -- now, again, i'm being -- was -- was he learned from his experience with dealing with the military with afghanistan. gates opposed the mission of osama bin laden and he overruled gates. that is a huge -- that's a huge change of attitude towards the military and in the book, i sort of compare it to jfk and the bay of pigs situation. he got sold a bill of good by the military, cia and realized it was bad. >> the report is amazing what was the afghanistan surge. it just shows the way in which -- we saw this play out in real-time in which the press and leaks to the press were used as instruments of boxing the president in. basically, making it so that he is in a situation where doing anything but giving the generals the troops there they are calling for is this rejection of the military and he ends up going -- it looks like they totally roll him based on the reporting in the book. >> they do. i think it was a deliberate very well thought out campaign that general mcchrystal and general petraeus had a lot of experience in this sort of thing. and, you know, all of a sudden, there is, you know, 19, you know, different columnists coming out saying you have to give the generals what they want. there is these leaks saying general mcchrystal is going to resign and general petraeus is going to resign. what do you do? i ended up, you know, spencer ackerman said you're too easy on the president in this. i said at the end of this whole process of reporting, one of the things i realized is sort of -- i became sympathetic to the position president obama was in, in that trying to get a handle on this massive, you know, military, industrial, media complex, i got the media industrial complex in the book would be downtowning when you have health care, economic crisis, et cetera, et cetera. >> this never happens with the irs, right? it's because of the unique power of the military and the american life and my colleague rachel maddow has a book coming out on this topic. >> "drift." >> yes. i'm just making my way through it. it's incredible. senior irs officials would be leaking documents to the press saying we have to raise taxes or there is no other choice! the president like, oh, well, the head of the irs will resign unless you raise marginal rates, right? no one cares what the irs thinks, right? but because we have invested so much -- >> another unique power of the military is in the president's jobs proposal which is very extensive, the only piece that has passed congress to become law is for our veterans. >> that's right. >> at his state of the union, many members of congress, including myself, gave our one seat. we have a seat for our spouses and we all gave our seat to returning vets of afghanistan vet from my district in my seat. >> i want to ask you why we are in afghanistan right after this break. >> great yes. >> great question. 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[ male announcer ] introducing spark the small business credit cards from capital one. get more by choosing unlimited double miles or 2% cash back on every purchase, every day. what's in your wallet? this guy's amazing. that's right. we have to bump in here on a shot of michael hastings lucky cuff lings. a give i understand from your wife? >> a wedding gift from my life elise jordan. >> who is on "up with chris hayes" tomorrow morning. we like to give that a plug. here is a question, the fundamental question here. i'd like to come to you, congresswoman, after michael takes a shot at it. why are we in afghanistan? ten years later, why are we in afghanistan? >> look. we are there because we are there, you know? it's amazing. i went back and looked at what some people were saying in october 2001 and famously johnny w. apple at "the new york times" said be careful we don't get stuck in a quagmire. he was laughed and mocked for that. the policy was let's not get stuck in a quagmire. but as iraq happened, the military response to this sort of disaster in iraq coming up with this counterinsurgency plan to stabilize iraq and turn their attention to afghanistan and say, okay, well, it worked in iraq, let's roll the dice here. so there is no -- it doesn't make us safer. it's extremely expensive. and a lot of people are dying. and so -- but it's sort of momentum. it's the momentum of the war. >> congresswoman, you voted for the authorization to use military force. you're a member of congress. and only one person voted against it, barbara lee in california. i think it's fair to say there was that wrong writers in election and american public at large. >> and the media. >> and the media. behind it. i think the afghanistan result forces us to ask harder questions than the iraq war. the iraq war, i think, we can all say we were sold a bill of goods and there was the neoconservatives. but afghanistan sort of everyone was on board and look we have ended up ten years later. what lessons do you learn as someone who has to vote on these critical issues and we are still there ten years later without a mission and insight? >> you have to look when the vote took place and it took place right after 9/11 which was stunning to this country that innocent americans were murdered on american soil just for being americans. not military. people who woke up and went to work like every american does and they were murdered. and there is was the threat that what the military was telling us at the time that the old traditions of containment no longer worked, there were weapons of mass destruction and carry them to times square and kill everybody in new york. you had osama bin laden going on television saying we're training people to come over, we're training in afghanistan, we want everyone to join us and we want to go over and kill americans and their allies. so what was surprising to me about afghanistan is that for a long period, it must have been a month, at least three weeks. president bush was saying give us osama bin laden and we will leave you alone. give us osama bin laden. and i thought they were going to give us osama bin laden. give one person and leave the whole country alone. when i was in afghanistan and met with military officials, i asked the question why in the world didn't the taliban give us osama bin laden? and the answer was very interesting. they thought that we would never come. they thought that even if we wanted to come, we didn't have the expertise to even get to afghanistan. they didn't think america had the will or the ability to invade their country. and, of course, we have showed them very differently. >> sure. >> i think that the mission in afghanistan is far more justifiable than iraq, because they were using it as a training ground and you can say, well, that wasn't really a threat. but if you have a whole swath of land where you're training people to come over and kill americans, that's very serious. and if you talk to ray kelly, he'll say there have been numerous other attempts to harm america since 9/11. >> michael, respond to this. >> i would not disagree that afghanistan was clearly more justifiable. my main argument in the book is we shouldn't have gone into afghanistan and the policy pursuing there doesn't prevent terror safe havens. bl bl osama bin laden was not even in afghanistan. he was in pakistan. >> he wasn't sitting around watching television. >> the underwear bomber. should we send nato to greenwich or darian? i'm not making the argument we should not vigorously pursue people trying to get us. i'm saying the strategy we are pursuing now by having 23-year-olds running around doing -- look. my younger brother is a bronze star medal winner infantry platoon leader. some of my closest friends are soldiers. so i talk to them and this is not just my own observations. i won't out my brother telling me this stuff but folks tell me this stuff and they say, you know, we know we're not actually making a difference or making -- >> i agree with you. >> wasn't that strategy laid on day one of the invasion of afghanistan? when the decision was to go for entire regime change instead of going after the safe havens and coordinated globe of police action. that was a just response that was discussed and decided not to go in. >> i voted to stop funding afghanistan and many of us are working very hard and supporting the president's position that we need to get out of afghanistan. and one of the problems with afghanistan is that we started funding the war in iraq and not putting any resources in afghanistan. which was the original -- the original threat really. >> michael hastings, journalist and author of the new book "the operators," which is a "the new york times" best seller for the second week in a row, thank you. >> congratulations. i want to read the book! >> what do we know now we dean know last week? my answers are after this. 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gambling on the future? some states in the u.s. are so desperate for revenue they are turning to casinos. a new report which is looking at how much money can be made and whether it makes the surrounding area richer or poorer. and then office politics. i talk with former congressman harold ford jr. who makes a case for president obama's re-election and size up the gop field for us. pretty chat i had with him. >> thanks. what do we know now we didn't know last week? thanks for romney's tax returns we know in calendar 2010 he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9% and less than his own estimate of 15%. we know the reason he paid such a low rate was somewhat strangely because he wasn't laboring for it but rather than drawing off the gains of previous wealth and investments. we know former marcot suggested reporters ban the phrase romney made from the writing and replace it with more accurate romney estate generated. less you think he is out of touch? never fear thanks to this photo by one of his sobs last week, we know mitt romney has laundry but he has someone else fold it! we know romney does believe corporations are people as he famously pronounced last year saying this week, the banks aren't bad people, they are just overwhelmed right now. we know that institutions do not have to be filled with bad people to do very, very bad things, though, this simple insight seems beyond romney's grasp. we know gingrich's political finances are financed by sheldon adelson when the chinese government grapted him a gambling license and we know the two are the perfect symbols of new age. we know it's going to get a lot worse unless a critical mass of people demand a less corrupt finance system. we know at least one of the ratings agencies may have to answer in court for the corruption that proceeded the financial crash. illinois attorney general lisa magigan filed a lawsuit against standard & poor's on wednesday claiming they were willing to use every trick they had to get a higher rating. in the past they claimed their ratings are covered by the first amendment. we will know if they are speech or fraud. in the president's state of the union speech we know the commerce of defense will direct the navy to -- enough to power a quarter of a million homes. we know that air force is installing a one megawatt solar panel system and jets that run in a base in aurora, colorado and why president visited it on thursday. we know hundreds of thousands of demonstrators run to tahrir square in egypt to mark the first anniversary of protests that forced out former president mubarak. we know the euphoria of the pro ghks activists for a military rule and had he threaten the early promise of the arab spring. the publication of reporters without borders we now know the u.s. is press freedom ranking has dropped from 20 to 47. we know the authors of the report say it was due to the crackdown of reporters covering the occupy movement and we know iraq came in at 152. we know thanks to viewer lee nelson who e-mailed us that 29-year-old nathan clement will be the first occupier to run for congress. we know he intends to challenge allison schwartz in pennsylvania 13th district after participating in occupy philadelphia's camp liberty. he told political, quote, need a thousand signatures it's a low bar. finally, we now know according to the author of the web design book "mobile first" more iphones sold than babies born in the world every day. based on how many people use their i phones in bed that situation is only going to get worse. what do my guests now know they didn't know when the week began? we will find out after this. [ male announcer ] drinking a smoothie with no vegetable nutrition? ♪ [ gong ] strawberry banana! . fruit plus veggie nutrition new v8 v-fusion smoothie. could've had a v8. most powerful trading app ? total access - to everything. from idea to research to trade. including financials, indicators and real-time streaming quotes. whether you check your investments every day or every minute, our app can take them from thought to trade. at scottrade, seven-dollar trades are just the start. try our powerful mobile app. it's another reason more investors are saying... i'm with scottrade. ♪ i want to find out what my guests know now they didn't know when the week began. richard? >> we should know your guest tomorrow new york city attorney general eric sniderman has been appointed to head a task force to investigate fraud and mortgaged backed securities and sat with michelle obama in the box. we should remember that back in august, he was persona nongrata in washington because refusing to fine off on settlements he thought would be too much immunity. we should remember that the white house put incredible pressure on him that he resisted and that other groups and others resisted too. standing strong on principle and having -- behind champions works. >> heather, a group has done work on this. a lot of organizing has gone into resisting the settlement and now looks like it's a positive. congresswoman carolyn maloney i just learned is born in north carolina but a true. what do you know now? >> i know mitt romney's tax rate is even lower than what he announced and i was shocked to learn that he has three overseas accounts in switzerland, in the grand cayman islands, and in bermuda and they have cost the united states government at least $100 billion a year in lost revenue. i find sha shock ithat shocking >> tax havens we are not doing a good job in solving. heather, what do you now know? >> i know that apple really believes that it's customers care more about a new iphone than workers conditions in china. i may know who actually is going to win the pulitzer prize winner for reporting. i thought that piece that is built into the cost of "the new york times" is brilliant and going to put the onus on us. i'm predicting all of us, apple users, to say to apple we want them to be the leader in the industry on standards in their supply chain. >> that article with a great reporter of the "the new york times." i want to give a shout-out to mike daisy a solo theater performer we had on the show before and did that reporting before "the new york times" did and went to fox com notorious factory there. he will join us tomorrow to have a discussion about america's economic future and perceptions of america's decline and outsource and the moon and apple and somehow tie that together. josh? >> i know something about the u.s. embassy in israel. we were discussing the allegedly new trend of a promise to move it to jerusalem and we discussed john mccain made that promise about. in 1995 congress passed a law and still on the books requiring the embassy move that it move from tel aviv to jerusalem. congresswoman maloney was one of the people in congress that voted for that. >> this is us doing pennants for kicking you off for hastings. you are saying, yeah, you want me to sit over here while you have hastings on? i will come back and fact check you all. nicely done, josh. my thanks to richard rim. >> always a pleasure. >> really great to have you. you should check out nation.com. he is editor of nation.com. nati nation.com is doing fantastic work. check it out. congresswoman carolyn maloney, a pleasure to have you here. heather and josh, thank you both so much. thank you for getting up. thank you for joining us today for "up." coming up next is "weekends with alex witt." join us tomorrow sunday morning at 8:00 when we will have new york attorney general iraq schneiderman and representative steve cohen and mikeaisey. really special show in store tomorrow. find out even more about tomorrow's program at msnbc.com. thank you so much and thanks for getting up. 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