we go there tonight. let's go "outfront." good evening. tonight, the super rich surtax. okay, i keep stumbling on that one. but president obama today went on the road to press a theme from his state of the union address telling millionaires they need to pay up. >> if you make more than a million dollars a year you should pay a tax rate of at least 30%. >> all right, the president's proposal would affect about 240,000 tax filers across the country. an expert tells us it would effectively raise the top margin rate about 44% for millionaires. now, that's the highest it's been since the middle of this guy's administration when he was cutting taxes. now, putting aside the debate over whether it's fair, here's the math. taxing this dplup would bring in $41 billion in revenue a year. that adds up to about 380 billion over ten years. thanks to david logan for running the numbers for us. that sounds like a lot of money, right? but here is an interesting thing. compare it to our debt and you'll see it is only a teeny, tiny, minute sliver. about 2.5%. the bottom line is that president obama's plan whether you like it or not, won't be enough to fix the debt problem. to fix the problem, we're going to need bigger numbers. for example, the bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year. letting them for people who make $250,000 will raise $678 billion over ten years, but if you let them ix peer for everyone, you're looking in the eye of $2.8 trillion, and that math works. that cuts the debt by 18% immediately. big problems need bigger solutions. adam davidson is with "the new york times," john avlon, great and jamal simmons. adam, lets me start with you. io have looked into thes and done incredible breakdowns on this. actually, you've looked at if you taxed all millionaires at 100%, it doesn't do what taxing the middle class would do. >> we don't tax wealth in the country. we tax new income. if you look at all the millionaires in america, they make around $700 billion in income and pay about $200 billion a year in taxes. the two bipartisan commissions -- they both gave similar numbers. we need about $400 billion either in more taxes or less spending. and so, you'd have to tax all the millionaires at much close to 100% to break that nut. now, i'm not saying we shouldn't tax the rich more. i think for equity reasons, fairness reasons, sure. maybe it's a good idea. but the math doesn't add up that that solves our problems. >> and what about when you look at the middle class? you look at the bush tax cuts going away for everyone. you actually had looked at what it would take to make a big difference. what kind of increases? >> i don't want to say boy, the middle class must bear the burden, but the thing about the 1% is there's only 1% of them. if you add up the entire 1%, it's about $1.7 trillion and they pay i'm doing the math in my head, something like $400 billion already. they can pay more. they definitely can pay more. that's probably a reasonable thing to propose, but there's just not a reasonable amount they can pay that solves our problem. i saw and am not proposing that since the middle class makes around $5 trillion a year, that's three times more than the 1% does, you can tax increase their taxes by 8% and it has the impact of taxing the very rich at 100%, so clearly, the middle class will have to share some of the burden. >> that's on the tax side. that goes to show you that's complicated. then there's the spending sign, john, which is a big way to get rid of the debt. >> that's right. here's what's important. yes, we have a spending problem in this country, but just like we can't tax our way out, we can't cut our spending out of this problem alone. domestic spending about makes around 12% of the federal budget. what needs to be done is an all of the above approach. everybody knows this is true. yeah, you need to raise revenues, cut spending and bend the cost curve on entitlements. all three things need to be done. every time we've had a chance to do it, the committee couldn't find the political will to do the tough thing. that's the problem we're facing. >> now, jamal, the whole concept of raising taxes on millionaires is popular. always has been, still is. from the political point of view, that seems to be what the president thinks he can get benefit from, right? >> what the president said last night was everybody needs a fair shot in this country and everybody has to do their fair share. and i think there's a sentiment in the country that we had bank bailouts, auto bailouts, but not homeowner bailouts. we didn't have taxpayer bailouts. the president said no more bailouts, handouts and copouts. everybody's got to participate. that's right politically. on the economic side, john is right. we have to do all of it. one piece he left out though. we've got to grow this economy. if we don't, all the rest of this stuff is still not going to get us all the way to a closed up deficit. >> on that issue, jamal, let me play something newt gingrich had to say, talking about what the effect of focusing the taxation on this one group of people might do to groith. >> i just want to comment on one thing in the state of the union last night, which i'm not sure the president understood, but if he meant what he said, it would be a disaster of the first order. >> now, obviously, i don't think jamal the president's not trying to say he can solve this all by taxing millionaires, is he? >> no, i don't think he said that at all. i think he said you need a fair shot and everybody's got to do their fair share. that's a part of this where the tax increase comes from. but he said he's going to cut off the bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000. at thp end of this year, so that's going to close another part of this. and let's not forget, last summer, he sat at the table with john boehner and said he was willing to go somewhere on entitlement cuts. but boehner couldn't cut the deal at the end. >> politically, it's, i guess, impossible for him to say certain things last night. it's easy for him to talk about taxing millionaires. everyone likes that. but some of the other things that would get us there. simpson bowles, helps the the wealthy, but not something people want to hear. he didn't want to touch the things that are kryptonite. that all of the commissions under president bush and president obama said we need to do. >> remember, the goal here isn't just equity or fairness. it's to deal with our deficit and debt. that's a real strategic problem for the united states. the question is how you get there. it's going to take pain. politicians are so pain averse. they're willing to demagogue the dent every election season, but when it comes time to deal with it, they run away in the other direction, especially on social security and medicare reform. >> the president did intimidate to john boehner last summer, he was will on entitlement cut. boehner couldn't cut the deal with his caucus. >> you need plans on the table. that's where we seem stalled. everyone recognizes we have a problem. the question is whether we're going to find the the political will. right now is a great opportunity for tax reform. from the romney tax returns, to this proposal tonight, let's get a fair, flatter tax system in place. >> adam, you look at the math and say, okay, look, $5 trillion a year in the middle class and $700 billion for the millionaires, but all of this masks the overall point, if you went to a flatter system and added a lot of productivity to it, you could get a lot of the loopholes. >> yes, at least the intellectuals of both parties are much closer. corporate tax, they're whether within five points, 20%, that we should eliminate corporate loopholes, make the tax 30%. have a simpler two or three level system. make the rich pay more, but at a lower rate. >> so why doesn't the president talk about closing loopholes? why instead does he choose to put out a number that says i'm punching him? >> i think he spent last summer and into the fall talking about comprehensive tax reform, closing loopholes. having a simpler system. he couldn't get the republicans to sit down because john boehner doesn't control that part of the caucus and the tea party folks to say we're going to have them tax revenue increases along with the entitlement cuts. everybody knows you've got to do it. but he needs a partner who's willing and able to cut the deal. >> this is about getting a deal to get his base fired up. that's why he framed it that way last night. what mitch daniels said in his republican response, he talked about closing loopholes on the super rich. so we should be able to find an opportunity for an agreement, people. >> that would result in them paying more and so theoretically, everybody would be happy. >> there's a deal to be made. >> i know very few people who would say they're not happy to pay more, especially in the current situation. navy s.e.a.l.s. rescue an american aide worker. from somali pirates. the man who literally wrote the book on the pirates spent time out front with the story. google, they've been collecting a lot of information anything, you have ever wanted to search for on the sly, and they're doing something with it now. and was it a murder or tragic accident? three afghans suspected of committing a horrific honor killing in canada. all that "outfront" next. i wouldn't do that. get married? no, i wouldn't use that single miles credit card. nice ring. knock it off. ignore him. with the capital one venture card you earn... double miles on every purchase. 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[ male announcer ] get the venture card at capitalone.com and earn double miles on every purchase every day. what's in your wallet? i was gonna say that. uh huh... new details about the daring u.s. raid that freed an american and another hostage held by somali pirates. the navy s.e.a.l. team that killed osama bin laden parachuted in and entered. the compound. they killed at least nine pirates. they all escaped unharmed by helicopter. american aid worker jessica buchanan and paul cesak from denmark were kidnapped last october. now, there's a lot of land kidnappings. they've been terrorizing captives and the whole point is to get ransom money. while we hear a lot about them in headlines, very few have spent time with them. in part, kidnapping and death are real and present risks for anyone in somalia. this man knows all about them, he spent time with them. he went in there, lived with them, had protection of a clan. he's in nairobi right now and i spoke to him before the show and asked him about the pirates behind this kidnapping. >> well, it was based in central somalia. i was there two years ago. now, you're seeing a much more brutal gang, and also gangs that are turning inwards. so these two hostages were freed, they were from the dannish demining group. they were kidnapped on land, so oddly enough, pirates, because it's becoming more and more difficult for them to hijack ships at sea, they're actually as i said, turning inland and i guess you can't call it piracy anymore. you can call it straight up kidnapping. you also find that much like, like kidnapping groups evolve over time, they become more brutal. the pirates aren't at the level of the farc in colombia or taliban. or what not, but it's getting to that point. >> the groups we're talking about, some of these pirates part of larger criminal groups. they have access to financing. issues with al shabaab, how big is the network? >> i would say pirate groups are less organized than people think. now, they're becoming more organized, more like standing militias. especially back when i was there, it was a loose business organization that coalesced around people who had money. they were financers who funded operations in the past, would get their friends and relatives, put together a gang, and engage in kidnapping. there are some links to al shabaab. it's not like you can speak of pirates as a singular organization. >> where does the money from the ransom go? what do they use it for? it's interesting down in, rio, gangs there want to have gold plated guns. things like that. you have other gangs that have much broader goals and more religious goals. where does the money go? from these kidnappings and ransoms in somalia. >> i say it comes down to two things. cars and cot. cot being the narcotic drug they're addicted to and the cars, land kriezers or the pirate company car, the toyota surf. a baby land cruiser that less affluent pirates can afford. that's where most of the money goes. >> what do you think it was like or could you tell us it was like for these two hostages while they were in captivity? how do you think they were treated or what can you tell us about what they might have gone through? we're looking at them now. jessica and paul. >> yeah, i don't know too much about the particular circumstances, but i can imagine they were probably treated better than your average hostage. they were moved around constantly. the pirates were so paranoid of an attack on land. at one point, one report found out that they were taken on board a hijacked ship because the pirates were so paranoid of what happened. so i guess hindsight's 20/20. they were kicked off that ship after there was a disagreement among the various stakeholders and they were forced back on land and that's when this rescue happened. what spawned the timing of the rescue is that jessica was experiencing a serious kidney ailment. they brought a doctor to look at her, but the resources he had were not sufficient. given the circumstances. and that's what i think determined the timing of this commando raid. >> all right. thank you so much. appreciate you taking the time. >> thank you. my pleasure. from pirates to privacy. tonight's under surveillance takes on google's new push. google announced today it will merge all the information it collects about you through your searches, android phones, youtube, to give you a quote more intuitive google experience. are these changes an innovation of privacy? paul is here to tell us if google has gone too far. interesting, paul, i talked to eric schmidt at headquarters and asked him about his policy on tracking personal information. this was just about a month ago. here is what he said. >> our strategy is to make sure anything we know about you, you opt in. so if there's information about your location, you choose to share that. >> my understanding is there is no opting. >> you should have been accompanied by your lawyer on that little tour because you know, they've changed their policy completely. you have to opt out in order to evade these collection of this material and the only thing that's voluntary about google is signing up in the first place. once you're into their system, they collect so much information about you it's really staggering. i think the public would be shocked to know. >> how does this work though from the perspective of our rights. what is the difference between opting in and out? everybody wants opt out, like, hey, when i go oin and order from a catalog, i have to uncheck the box that says i'm going to get more e-mails. isn't this essentially the same thing? >> it's similar to that, but the opt out provision with google is very, very difficult because they collect so many items of information in so many different services. >> you can't just opt out all together. >> no, you can't. there's not one box that says unsubscribe, so when you search google, they're getting the information. if you have google mail, they're getting the information. if you're in picasa, they're getting the information there. they track where you travel to. they know all of this stuff. they know more than you can possibly imagine. >> and i have to trust their benevolence. in all seriousness, is this going to be challenged? >> it's being investigated right now, it's being looked at by federal authorities. by european authorities who are very, very sensitive to privacy, but mixed bag. we get so much information as a result of having this service. they pay for it by using this generic information about us to advertise. so you know, it's a mixed bag. as to whether we want to give the information or not. >> let us know what you think. next, the polls out of florida. it is a dead heat. we with promise you that. plus, what's the healthiest place in america? 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[ female announcer ] tell your story at progressosoup.com for the chance to win an ultimate makeover in hollywood. so, loma linda, california. if you're watching there tonight, listen up. it's the healthiest town in america. home to a medical center that attracts 600,000 patients a year. loma linda does not have any liquor stores and has been tobacco free for almost 30 years. wow, you say? well, it is certainly different from other places in this country. national geographic called it one of the healthiest cities in the planet. that brings us to tonight's number. one. that is the number of mcdonald's restaurants loma linda will have. in a controversial move today, the council voted to approve the town's first mcdonald's. a decision that has divided the community. half the town's population is seventh day adventist and some called it an affront to the teachings but the town's mayor, an adventist who supports it says, quote, my perspective as a conservative libertarian is that the government's role should be minimalized. we should keep people from harming one another, but government doesn't have a strong need to keep them from harming ourselves. we decided to check out what else is there. they have a carl's junior franchise. so i wanted to check, the big carl, yes, the big carl is actually even worse than the double quarter pounder with cheese. yep. so maybe the mayor's right. this is more about what the golden arches represent than what they serve. still outfront, the "outfront" five. a murder mystery. >> we don't know where, you don't know why, you don't know how. >> all this outfront in our second half. idelity green line? well, yeah, but it keeps leading me back to my old office. i think it might be broken. or maybe it's trying to tell you something. yeah, but what could it be try-- oh, i left my 401(k) at my old job. and i left a jacket on the back of my door. but i think the line's talking about my 401(k). leave a 401(k) behind? roll it over with a company that's helping more people reach retirement than anyone else. call or come in for a free portfolio review today. if you have painful, swollen joints, i've been in your shoes. one day i'm on top of the world... the next i'm saying... i have this thing called psoriatic arthritis. i had some intense pain. it progressively got worse. my rheumatologi