Guests: Chris Hayes, Alex Wagner, Steve Clemons, Richard Trumka
LAWRENCE O‘DONNELL, HOST: The president will address the nation on Libya on Monday. And this weekend in Iowa, spring training gets underway for Republican presidential candidates.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS: Will this be the Andy Warhol Republican primary? Donald Trump, now Michele Bachmann. Everyone is looking for their 15 minutes of fame.
O‘DONNELL: A new king maker in Iowa. Congressman Steve King invites Republican candidates to his state for a conservative principles conference.
REP. STEVE KING ®, IOWA: If you have candidates who are anchored with a deep core in their faith, their moral standards will be apparent.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It‘s going to be an interesting bookend in the morning, Steve King, at night, Jim DeMint.
CHRIS JANSING, NBC NEWS: Tea Party leader Michele Bachmann thinks 2012 could be her year.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI, MSNBC ANCHOR: She told one of these birther Web sites that she was going to get a call from the Almighty whether or not she should run for president. I believe that call has come in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you‘re Tim Pawlenty, this is not a good thing to happen.
O‘DONNELL: And in Washington, the president continues to face criticism from the right and the left on his decision to attack Gadhafi.
TODD: Let‘s go to Libya. NATO has agreed to take command of the no-fly zone. But the U.S. isn‘t leaving the fight all together.
ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC NEWS: As of right now, it appears that U.S. war planes will leave the more difficult mission attacking Gadhafi ground forces, and that could threaten Libyan civilians.
STEVE CLEMONS, WASHINGTON NOTE: And I don‘t think NATO is fully charge. I mean, I think they‘re still in dispute.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is the end game here? How will we know when the mission is accomplished?
TODD: This is war fatigue. Two weeks ago, we saw those numbers—the first numbers on the war in Afghanistan and how sour the country is. That‘s what these lawmakers are channeling.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The hypocrisy meter has been broken by Newt Gingrich and others.
MITCHELL: We should only listen to Mike Barnicle every day on
“MORNING JOE.”
O‘DONNELL: And just this once, the president wishes more would listen to Bill O‘Reilly. In his “New York Post” column today, “We did the right thing in Libya.”
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president wanted to bring in the military, on military action. And the Congress can just block all it wants, Republicans and Democrats alike, but there‘s really no way to stop the president.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O‘DONELL: Good evening.
When this man ran for Republican inauguration for president last time around, the Republican Party and media, including left and right flanks of the political blogosphere, agreed that his candidacy was too ridiculous to be taken seriously. And so, they completed ignored when he was saying things like this:
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ALAN KEYES, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Ask yourself who represents the people they don‘t let you hear from. You‘ll know who you should vote for in the Iowa caucuses, who represents a voice that they are absolutely determined to overlook in the discussion of our sovereignty and betrayal of this people‘s sovereignty, on the border, on our moral principles, on the major export overseas, which is our jobs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Alan Keyes is actually much better educated than Michele Bachmann, and on his worst day could never say something like this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN ®, MINNESOTA: I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.
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O‘DONNELL: But the political media follows Bachmann with real interest because she does seem to have something of a movement behind her, the Tea Party movement, the most forgiving movement in American political history—a movement that believes it is grounded in American history, specifically the Boston Tea Party, but at the same time has no regard for American history.
So, Michele Bachmann can say Lexington and Concorde are in whatever state she happens to be in at the time, and the Tea Partiers will still clap. If ignorance is bliss in the Tea Party, Republican presidential primary debates are going to be sillier than ever.
When asked who doesn‘t believe in evolution this time around, all hands are going to have to go up instead of just half of them.
Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King has decided it is time to give us a preview of how anti-intellectual, which is to say anti-information, and anti-fact the Republican debate stage can sound like. King is hosting a conservative principles conference in Des Moines tomorrow, where Bachmann, serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, former lobbyist Haley Barbour, defeated Senate candidate Rick Santorum will speak, along with tag alongs John Bolton and Herman Cain.
Here‘s Steve King‘s expectation for the conference.
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KING: Tomorrow, I hope we see the full spectrum of issues on the agenda—from the social issues all the way through the economic issues and national defense issues, American different issues.
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O‘DONNELL: Bachmann spent 17 minutes on FOX News last night toying with the idea of running for president. The gentle lady from Minnesota speaking from Iowa was suddenly an Iowans.
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BACHMANN: When I grow up here in Iowa, I am an Iowan. As a matter of a fact, I‘m a 7th generation Iowan. When I grew up in Iowa, our family was Democrat. We were reasonable, fair minded people.
We had Republicans in our family. We had Democrats in our family. We weren‘t terribly partisan. We just wanted the country to work, have good jobs, fair taxes. That‘s what a lot of America wants. That‘s really what the Tea Party wants.
So, this isn‘t some sideline group. This is a broad swath of America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: This morning in West Des Moines, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour told the Christian Iowa Renewal Network exactly what they wanted to hear.
Oh, I got to read this one. “We‘re doing everything that we can to stop abortion in our state. And if I get elected president, I will come into office with that attitude, and that‘s about 180 degrees different from the current president.” Of course, that‘s also about 180 degrees different from Republican presidents who have done nothing, nothing to stop abortion in this country.
Barbour, of course, would do nothing to stop abortion if he were to become president, but he will never become president, so he need not worry on making good on any grand presidential campaign promises.
On his way to losing the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich is at the Des Moines Marriott right now signing copies of his book, “Rediscovering God in America,” a how-to manual for has been politicians to resuscitate their careers from the political death of one too many sex scandals.
The last winner of the Iowa Republican caucuses will not be in attendance. Mike Huckabee will be safely ensconced in his FOX News studio in Manhattan this weekend doing his FOX News show which is the booby prize Huckabee e ended up winnings after successfully pandering to Iowa‘s right wing voters.
If Michele Bachmann follows that Huckabee model, she can be the next Republican campaign loser to write her own ticket and become a FOX News host.
Joining me now is Chris Hayes, Washington editor of “The Nation” and MSNBC political analyst. And Alex Wagner, reporter for “Huffington Post” and an MSNBC contributor.
Alex, Rick Santorum actually dropped out of the fold in the last few hours, but that‘s actually some family issue that he has.
ALEX WAGNER, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Right.
O‘DONNELL: Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, the more establishment types seem to be staying away from this thing.
WAGNER: Yes, this is a party, I think it‘s an A-list, B-list situation here. And I think part of that has to do with Peter King and who he is. I mean, this is a guy that has equated illegal immigration with terrorism. He‘s thought to amend the 14th Amendment. And I think a lot of hot button issues are going to come up here.
And for folks like Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, who are trying to maintain the impression at least of being more moderate candidates, this could potentially put them in difficult or at least hot territory that they don‘t necessarily want to get into this early in the race.
O‘DONNELL: Chris Hayes, Steve King has, as Alex says, taken some very strange positions, but none stranger than Michele Bachmann. Michele Bachmann is there to make everybody else look reasonable, isn‘t she?
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: I don‘t know if she‘s really taking one for the team. I think she‘s sort of victim to her own egomania, and the fact that she gets a lot of air time, and she can raise a significant amount of money, because the nature of the sort of dynamics of Internet fund-raising are that sort of polarizing figures like Michele Bachmann can actually produce through earned media some kind of mass fund-raising outfit.
So, I think that what‘s interesting here is that Bachmann does make everyone else look reasonable, and at the same time, if you take any sort of sustained examination of polling data on likely Republican primary voters, or conservatives or self avowed Tea Party folks, what you find their views are largely in line with Michele Bachmann -- 50 percent in the PPP poll didn‘t believe that President Obama was born in the United States. I mean, if you go through a host of issues, immigration, repeal of DADT, they are very, very far outside the mainstream of American public opinion. Those are going to be the people determining the fate of the Republican field in primary states.
O‘DONNELL: Chris, do you think the best business choice for Bachmann is to actually get in this race? I can‘t figure it out with her what the best business choices. Obviously, for Palin, for example, the best business choice is to stay out of it and she‘s going to stay out of it, and continue to be, you know, Sarah Palin, incorporated.
HAYES: Yes.
O‘DONNELL: Mike Huckabee seems to have made the choice that he‘s better off at FOX News than going back out on the campaign trail.
But for Bachmann, does she somehow build her credibility by running a presidential campaign that everybody knows she‘s going to lose?
HAYES: Yes. I think, I mean, I think there‘s a sort of fascinating kind of like political media industrial complex that developed on the right that sort of orbits around FOX News and FOX News contributor contracts such that it is the case that—you know, she could probably have some very lucrative cash after this audition is over. I don‘t know if that‘s what she‘s thinking.
You know, for all I know, Michele Bachmann, you know, thinks she should be the president of the United States and thinks she has a shot at it. But, you know, whether she does or does not succeed, and I would agree with you that it‘s unlikely she will, what we‘ve seen is that there‘s a very thin line between being a kind of media celebrity in sort of conservative politics and being an actual politician.
O‘DONNELL: Alex, it‘s not clear how much any current events will actually be relevant to the discussion at this symposium in Iowa, but Newt Gingrich has been talking a bit about Libya over the last few weeks.
Let‘s listen to what sufficed as explanation for his several positions on Libya on FOX News last night.
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NEWT GINGRICH ®, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: Then, on March 3rd, if President Obama had not come out and said Gadhafi has to go, I would have preferred the Reagan, Eisenhower model of using the CIA, using our allies, having Moroccan, Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi forces helping the people who are going to overthrow Gadhafi.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: So, I don‘t know. I can‘t quite follow that thing, but he seems to be saying if President Obama hadn‘t said something that I disagreed with, I wouldn‘t have been forced to agree with him.
WAGNER: I mean, this is—this is now—it‘s like almost like a basketball maneuver, pulling a Newt. I mean, going from one position to the next overnight. I think—and we‘ve seen other people in the Republican Party do this. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen yesterday doling the same thing and it‘s basically that whatever Obama does, I will do the opposite of tactic.
I don‘t think it necessarily serves him well because there is something called the Internet that still exists in the world. These clips are so available. These statements live online, and it basically is a flip-flop.
The other thing is on a foreign policy level—look, you know, Republicans and Democrats, you know, there has been bipartisan support for humanitarian intervention in the past. To make this some kind of a wedge issue I don‘t think plays well for either side.
O‘DONNELL: Chris, let‘s listen to what Haley Barbour said about gays serving in the military. I think this is the kind of thing we‘re probably going to hear more of this weekend.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. HALEY BARBOUR ®, MISSISSIPPI: When you‘re under fire, and people are living and dying on split second decisions, you don‘t need any kind of amorous mindset that can affect saving people‘s lives and killing bad guys.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Chris, needless to say, Haley Barbour has never been under fire like most of these people who are authorities on how things work in the military. Isn‘t that the kind of pander that we‘re going to hear a lot more of in Iowa?
HAYES: It is. And I think amorous mindset was the title of Newt Gingrich‘s first book actually.
(LAUGHTER)
HAYES: I think—look, what‘s really interesting about this, there has been this kind of attempt at rebranding that‘s happened from folks like Dick Armey and Karl Rove and people that have engineered this sort Tea Party rebranding of the American right, to focus on the deficit, the debt, spending, issues like that. The fact of the matter is, the core constituency of the American right wing conservatives is still very grounded in concern with these social issues—gay marriage, opposition to “don‘t ask, don‘t tell” repeal.
And the fascinating thing is those social issues that worked as wedge issues for the right for a generation, for 30 years, they are now on the other side of, and the political strategists in the GOP understand that. We have the first poll ever in which the majority of Americans supported gay marriage. DADT repeal was very popular. They cannot wield those in the same way. And yet, the core constituency that they have to pander to in primaries still holds those views deeply.
So, you‘re going to see a lot of that and it‘s going to really hang them up in the general, I think. And I hope the Democrats understand that they can now lean forward. They are now the aggressor on the issues in the way that they were in defensive crouch for a whole generation.
O‘DONNELL: And the prize for using lean forward in a sentence tonight goes to Chris Hayes of “The Nation.”
(LAUGHTER)
HAYES: (INAUDIBLE) the contract, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Chris Hayes of “The Nation” and Alex Wagner of “The Huffington Post”—thanks for joining me tonight.
WAGNER: Thanks, Lawrence.
HAYES: Thanks a lot.
O‘DONNELL: Still ahead, despite a judge‘s restraining order that bill stripping Wisconsin workers of their rights could take effect tomorrow as even more Republican governors move against their own state workers. Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO reacts to the late-breaking developments.
And President Obama will address the nation on Monday night on U.S. involvement with Libya. But with pro-democracy protests now in a half dozen countries, the president could be faced with even more challenging decisions ahead. That‘s next.
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O‘DONNELL: The president is going to speak to the nation Monday night to explain the action in Libya. Will he also have to explain our inaction in other countries? Steve Clemons joins me next.
And our imaginations at work. One of our parent companies is in the “Rewrite” tonight over taxes. Do you know how much G.E. pays in taxes? You don‘t want to know.
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O‘DONNELL: On Monday at 7:30 p.m., the president will address the nation on the conflict in Libya. By then, the president might have to explain what the United States is willing to do to support freedom fighters in other countries.
Today, in several cities throughout Syria, government troops opened fire on protesters decrying President Assad and calling for increased freedoms. At least 24 civilians were killed today according to activists on the ground.
In Yemen today, protesters fled a day of departure rally against President Saleh. After 32 years in power, Saleh has pledged to relinquish power, but only to, quote, “safe hands.” At least 50 protesters have been killed there.
In Jordan today, for the first time, peaceful demonstrations turned violent. Riot police killed one protester and wounded 100 more as pro and anti-government mobs clashed at Jordan‘s capital.
In Bahrain‘s capital, pro-democracy protesters held a day of rage rally, demanding the ruling Khalifa family reform the constitution. Public gatherings are illegal according to martial law imposed last week. Today, a 71-year-old man died of tear gas asphyxiation, joining at least 20 others killed in Bahrain in two months of uprisings.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney defined the difference between those violent protests across the Middle East today and what demanded military action in Libya.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: On the question of what‘s different about Libya, I think scale is important here. The enormity of the potential violence, the amount of violence that had occurred against civilian populations, but also what was about to occur, and the promises made by Gadhafi himself on what he would do to the people of Benghazi were obviously factors in this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Joining me now, founder of the American strategy program at the New America Foundation, Steve Clemons.
Thanks for joining us tonight, Steve.
STEVE CLEMONS, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION: Good to be with you.
O‘DONNELL: What‘s your reaction to Jay Carney‘s statement, the distinctions he drew there?
CLEMONS: Well, what we‘re seeing in the Middle East is really a human tsunami. I mean, it‘s a huge storm and it‘s very hard I think for anyone to come out with a cookie cutter that just says, in this case, we‘re going to respond in one way, and another we‘re not going to respond. Jay is basically saying they had intelligence that said that you could have seen tens of thousands of people really massacred. The president shifted in a night and I understand that shift.
Well, I‘ve been very concerned about a big Western military footprint in this case and sort of changing the frame of what‘s been going on in the Middle East and slippery slope for more U.S. involvement. I totally understand where they were coming from, but immediately ask the questions of—what do you do in something else? And the fact is we don‘t know what‘s coming tomorrow.
Two weeks ago, we thought Gadhafi may be on the way out. Ninety percent of the country was controlled by the opposition. We didn‘t—we didn‘t suspect we would see the kinds of things we‘re seeing in Syria today.
And the whole region is in such tumult. This is an incredibly historic moment in human history and that we haven‘t seen in perhaps 150 years or so, since 1848 when you saw similar kind of trend in Europe.
So, I understand the White House‘s position, but we really are seeing something that‘s so far beyond us, and I think it‘s very, very hard to come out with a standard policy now. We‘re really reacting to events and surfing these very big waves.
O‘DONNELL: President Obama today found surprising support from a surprising source, Mr. Bill O‘Reilly, writing in today‘s “New York Post”—
O‘Reilly he says, “This isn‘t a complicated issue. If America is a noble country, it should act to save lives when it can. That doesn‘t mean getting bogged down in quagmires like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. But when quick, decisive action can defeat evil, it should be taken. We did the right thing in Libya.”
Bill O‘Reilly saying we did the right thing in Libya puts him incomplete agreement with liberals like Senator Barbara Boxer, puts him incomplete agreement with President Obama. What‘s your reaction to that O‘Reilly/Obama/Boxer position?
CLEMONS: Well, I largely agree with the way Bill O‘Reilly framed this. If America can take quick, decisive action, and can limit its vulnerability, then I think action can be called for in some of these cases. If we can leave a scene, have done something great and good in the world, but not spent down the stock of American power, then that can work.
But there are a lot of “ifs” there. We sometimes can‘t plan war scenarios based on best case scenarios. We still don‘t know how this is going to come out. I‘ll give you an example. You know, one of the problems the president and his team are going to have is when you see all the changes going on in Egypt today—Egypt is the 900-pound gorilla. We have huge national securities stakes with what happens in Egypt.
And one has to wonder, what‘s the bandwidth of the White House to looking at all of these simultaneous problems at the same time? And do you, because we‘ve made now such a big investment in time and attention, coalition-building, incredible diplomacy with the Arab League, with the United Nations—have we so focused on Libya that we‘ve now under-focused on other issues like Egypt and others.
I remember being in China a few years ago, and I asked a Chinese strategist a diplomat there, what was China‘s great strategy in the world? And he says—how to keep you Americans distracted in small Middle Eastern countries.
So, we need to be able to look at the whole plate of foreign policy challenges facing us and not just running with the flavor of the month, the cause of the moment, and think that everything is OK. In that case, we‘ve got to weigh it against the opportunity costs that we may be missing elsewhere.
O‘DONNELL: Steven Clemons, thanks for joining us tonight.
CLEMONS: Thank you, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Still ahead, if you want to know what kind of policies you‘d likely see from a Republican president, there might be a hint in the way Republican governors are attacking worker rights. Richard Trumka from the AFL-CIO is ahead.
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O‘DONNELL: Still ahead this hour, when workers in Wisconsin protested, some Republicans encouraged violence responses, according to recently obtained e-mails. The AFL-CIO‘s Richard Trumka is next.
And as elected officials push for shared burdens in this time of budget deficit, we must point out that America‘s largest company paid nothing in corporate income tax this year. That company also happens to own about half of NBC, which means it owns about half of this show. In fact, it owns the half we just did, which means it doesn‘t own any of the “Rewrite”—which is coming up.
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O‘DONNELL: In the “Spotlight” tonight, on the 100th anniversary of a New York factory fired that killed nearly 150 young seamstresses, launching the modern labor movement and the New Deal, today, Wisconsin‘s controversial new law stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights was published by Wisconsin‘s Legislative Reference Bureau. That‘s despite a court order that it not be published by the secretary of state until the state Supreme Court decides whether the law was passed legally. It is not clear whether it has the force of law.
However, Governor Scott Walker‘s office says the administration will carry out the law as required.
The confusion surrounding the legality of the law comes after weeks of protests against Governor Walker and his Republican allies in the state capitol building. Protests have turned into a statewide effort to gather enough signatures to recall Republican lawmakers from office. Republican activists are in turn targeting the Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to prevent a quorum on the collective bargaining bill—launching ads like this one that actually portray Republicans as the champions of public school teachers.
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NARRATOR: She comes in early, stays late. She‘s the best teacher in her school. And if Dave Hansen has his way, she has every reason to leave Wisconsin. Our government employee contract laws tie her salary to what we pay the worst teachers. It‘s not fair to teachers and it‘s not fair to our kids.
We can solve the problem. Dave Hansen is playing partisan politics instead.
Call Senator Hansen, tell him to stop playing partisan political games.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Democrats quickly pointed out that the teacher in the ad is actually an actress, and not an actual public school teacher.
Yesterday, Republican Indiana deputy prosecutor Carlos Lam resigned after admitting that he sent an e-mail to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker suggesting a false flag operation to discredit union activists. “If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions‘ cause to physically attack you or even use a firearm against you, you could discredit the unions. Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a Democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest. Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions.”
Lam sent the email on the same day that another law enforcement agent, State Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Cox tweeted from his private account that riot police should, quote, “use live ammunition,” unquote, on the Wisconsin capitol protesters. He was later fired.
Joining me now is Richard Trumka, president of AFL-CIO. Thank you very much for joining us, Mr. Trumka.
RICHARD TRUMKA, AFL-CIO PRESIDENT: Lawrence, thanks for having me on.
O‘DONNELL: Are you surprised to discover how disappointed the Republicans were that your protests did not in any way turn violent, so disappointed that they wanted to create that violence themselves?
TRUMKA: We‘re not really surprised. If this were a reality show, you could call it “governors gone wild.” This guy is so bent on hurting middle class workers and public employees and the middle class, he is willing to go to any lengths. Hopefully, it discredits him because they don‘t have any kind of argument, so they have to resort to this type of fabrication. That‘s something we‘re used to.
O‘DONNELL: And used to it because there is, in fact, a very ugly history of this in the American labor movement, especially in the earlier years when they would send in goons from, you know, owners of factories and such to specifically provoke violence, create violence that wasn‘t there. This is not something that this guy was just imagining. This is actually something that he was maybe thinking of as having been successfully used in the past.
TRUMKA: It was. They called them agent provocateurs, and they would send them into peaceful demonstrations, create violence, and then use the police to bust people up. We thought that we were past that in the ‘30s. We thought the rule of law should prevail. But apparently, they don‘t see any rule of law here.
O‘DONNELL: When we think back in the history of the labor movement and today provokes that at the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, there has been so much progress that has been made—very often as the result of something extremely provocative, something like that fire that anyone could see was a grotesque injustice, not just because the building wasn‘t properly set up for evacuations and all that.
But when they discovered how many were squeezed into that place to do work, that was the kind of thing that made Americans realize, wait a minute, something has to be done for these workers. Has what‘s happened in Wisconsin and what‘s going on in this year—does it have any kind of galvanizing power going forward?
TRUMKA: Well, absolutely, Lawrence. It‘s hard not to draw parallels between what happened back then and what happened now. Those owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company didn‘t value the employees, didn‘t think they were entitled to safe conditions or good wages. What we have right now are governors who are willing to take away the same rights of workers that are out there, and it‘s having the same effect.
The public is joining in with us. The recall petitions are going like gangbusters. People from all walks of life, small business people, everybody that works together is coming together to protest this type of treatment and trying to take away the rights of workers to bargain together for a middle-class style of life.
Look, if collective bargaining protects our rights, teachers bargain for smaller classrooms, firefighters bargain for protective equipment, nurses bargain for patient care—without collective bargaining, everybody ends up losing, and that‘s what they‘re bent on doing so that they can payback their benefactors, people that contributed to them mightily in the last election like the Koch brothers.
O‘DONNELL: Let‘s look at what—how labor is fighting back with Governor Mitch Daniels in a spot that you guys are running.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NARRATOR: Mitch Daniels and his friends have big plans for hard working Hoosier families. But it‘s not more jobs or better wages. Instead, Governor Daniels and the Republicans others in Indianapolis want to kill collective bargaining, slash wages for workers, and decimate public schools by sending our tax dollars to private schools. But Democrats are standing up to Daniel‘s anti-middle class agenda and standing up for us.
Tell Governor Daniels stop hurting middle class families.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: What happens if Governor Daniels decides to run for president? Does that kind of ad campaign follow him?
TRUMKA: I‘m sure it will. I hope he doesn‘t run on a platform of destroying workers‘ rights and taking away education and all kind of other things because I think he‘ll be a dead ringer, end up in last place.
O‘DONNELL: Richard Trumka, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
TRUMKA: Thanks for having me on, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Republicans have slashed benefits for workers, the poor, single moms and children, while also slashing taxes for corporations. This year, America‘s biggest corporation, General Electric, paid nothing in income tax. That‘s in the “Rewrite.”
And when the president is in the news, he‘s also in the late-night monologues. The late night hosts get THE LAST WORD.
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O‘DONNELL: And now for tonight‘s tax law class. Oh, wait—I need my law professor glasses for this.
OK, class, if you make $5 billion, how much do you owe in taxes? Two billion? No. One billion? Uh-uh. One million? One thousand? One hundred? No. One dollar?
No. You pay zero if you have more than a thousand accountants, tax lawyers and lobbyists working on your tax bill. At least, that‘s how General Electric gets away with paying no income taxes.
And later, President Obama found himself all over the late night comedy shows this week. The late-night comedians get THE LAST WORD.
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O‘DONNELL: Time for tonight‘s “Rewrite.” You know, I‘m relatively new at an anchor desk here at MSNBC, so I‘ve never actually had to say G.E. is part owner of this network.
Jon Stewart thinks it‘s pretty funny that we have to do that so often.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The coffee makers have the potential to overheat. G.E., of course, is the parent company of NBC Universal.
KELLY O‘DONNELL, NBC NEWS: I should mention that that fighter jet engine is built by G.E., a part owner of MSNBC.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hospitals have been getting massive calls about the scanners, many of them made by G.E., parent company of NBC Universal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the most powerful engine in the world. Full disclosure: it‘s actually made by our parent company, General Electric.
BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: G.E., parent company of NBC Universal, makes a lot of things, including LED lights and we should have said so.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
O‘DONNELL: Jon Stewart is actually very good at explaining why we have to do that so often. General Electric is into a lot more than light bulbs and home appliances.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JON STEWART, COMEDIAN: Here‘s the thing about General Electric. It‘s a massive conglomerate with fingers in a lot of pies—media, medical equipment, appliances, light bulbs, oil, real estate, aviation, trains, weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: General Electric is so big that it‘s actually this country‘s biggest corporation. Now, in a fair world, that would make General Electric this country‘s biggest taxpayer, certainly its biggest corporate taxpayer. The trouble is, as any of you who saw the front page of “The New York Times” today already know, General Electric‘s tax bill for the year 2010 is actually zero.
Now, for those of you that just spilled your coffee over the tax return forms you have spread over the kitchen table trying to figure out how much you owe the government for 2010, G.E. has an explanation.
“‘The New York Times‘ story on G.E.‘s tax liability misses the biggest part of the story, which is the implications of the financial crisis. Significant losses at G.E. Capital are not a tax avoidance strategy. Taking out G.E. Capital actually makes G.E.‘s effective tax rate 21 percent over the pass several years.”
So, that explains why a company that made $14.2 billion worldwide last year, and $5.1 billion in the United States, is paying no corporate income tax in the United States. How can you make $5.1 billion in profit in the United States and pay no corporate income taxes in the United States?
To figure out how G.E. actually pulled that off, you would have to be able to dig into their corporate tax return. Now, these things aren‘t really too hard to read. Form—IRS form 1120, U.S. corporation income tax return—you know, I used to write tax law in the Senate Finance Committee, so, those things don‘t intimidate me. They‘re really pretty simple, you know, cost of goods, gross profit, dividends, gross rents, gross royalties, blah, blah, blah.
And the deductions list, you‘ve got here actually makes perfect sense. It‘s things like compensation for officers, salaries and wages, repairs and maintenance, bad debts, rents, charitable contributions, deflation and advertising, pension. It‘s just simple.
And on the second page, there‘s a list of deductions, special. These are the special deductions, the really complicated one. There‘s only 17 of them actually here right here. They are all related to dividends. Dividends can be complex, but only in 17 different ways, according to our tax return.
Again, easy enough to understand, if you know any of the language of business, and then you do your tax computation. Let‘s see, you do that right here on page three, up here where it says “tax computation” in a space that big. It‘s how much of space it takes to do that. You got a couple more questions on page four.
And you get to the end of this form, this very complicated form on page five. And you‘re done. That‘s it. Page five. You‘re done.
Unless, of course, you‘re General Electric, because when they fill out their 1120, it ends up expanding in order to cover every single thing they do, and that takes 24,000 pages. That‘s right. G.E. files a tax return that‘s 24,000 pages long! There isn‘t anyone working in the IRS who is capable of analyzing a 24,000 page tax return to find out just how much of a lead off the base that that tax filer might be taking.
Now, you know how much latitude there is in filling out a tax return. If you take a home office deduction and you assign that portion of rent to the 100 square feet of your home office that it represents and you deduct it, you know you can only deduct it if you never set foot in your home office to do anything unrelated to business. So, if you ever look at TMZ and that computer in your home office, or made, say, a travel reservation for your vacation on that computer in your home office, you‘re fooling with that deduction. You‘re taking more of a deduction than you actually should be deducting.
Now, everyone pretends that they use their home office exclusively for work. You know, it‘s also the same thing if you make charitable contributions of any used clothing. You set the value on it. You do—you know, with a little bit of rules. That value could be $100, could be $200. It could be pretty much whatever you say it is.
And what are you going to try to get away with? You‘re going to try to get away with something on the low side, on high side? A lot of people go for the highest possible valuation of their deductions.
What‘s your guess about how G.E. approaches this? When there‘s a range of possibilities from deduction from low to reasonable to unreasonable, what do you think? Do you think they ever pick low? Do you think they ever pick low reasonable? Do you think they ever pick reasonable?
Do you know how many people it takes at G.E. to create a 24,000 page tax return? Well, no one knows. G.E. doesn‘t even really know. All they know is that in their tax department, they employ 975 employees to create that 24,000 page tax return. They also have input from outside accountants and tax lawyers on those tax returns.
So, it takes at least a thousand people. That‘s a modest figure. That‘s an underestimate. At least a thousand people to file a G.E. tax return.
And they know they‘re sending to an agency that is undermanned, that is kept undermanned and ill-equipped by Republicans who refuse to fully finance it. They know they are sending to an agency that cannot make any attempt to seriously evaluate that tax return.
So, how big a lead off the base do you think G.E. takes with its deductions?
G.E. has submitted shocking tax returns in the past so shocking that when Ronald Reagan heard about it, he wanted to overhaul the tax code. Quote, “I didn‘t realize things had gotten that far out of line.” That‘s what President Reagan told his treasury secretary when he discovered how much G.E., his former employer, was not paying in taxes.
That led to the 1986 Tax Reform Act, which got rid of many egregious corporate tax loopholes. Since then, many of those loopholes crept back into the tax code, and many new ones have been invented.
G.E. and many other American corporations paid good money to Washington lobbyists to keep those loopholes open so that the corporate share of American tax revenue has fallen from 30 percent of all federal revenue back when Ronald Reagan was an actor in the 1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.
Now, I, for one, for the sake of argument anyway, am willing to take G.E.‘s word for it when they say, “Our accounting and tax positions fully comply with all applicable rules and regulations.”
That is the problem. The tax code is allowing them to get away with paying no taxes. Perhaps G.E.‘s outrageously legal tax return will once again provoke a move for real tax reform in Washington—a rewrite of the corporate tax code should be undertaken more than once every 25 years, because corporate lobbyists are working their way into that tax code every single day. Their dirty work has to be weeded out on a regular basis, and nothing, nothing proves that better than G.E.‘s tax return.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: It used to be when America went to war, our comedians had nothing to say about it. They did their best to try to take our minds off it, divert us. Not any more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
STEPHEN COLBERT, MEDIA: We had to, folks. Gadhafi has turned on his own people. He‘s become so unpopular that even his face is running away from him.
(LAUGHTER)
JIMMY KIMMEL, COMEDIAN: How can you make fun of anything when you‘ve been photographed wearing this hat?
(LAUGHTER)
KIMMELL: You can‘t. It looks like something Lady Gaga would eat oatmeal out of.
(LAUGHTER)
CONAN O‘BRIEN, COMEDIAN: President Obama is back from South America. Yes. And during a recent press conference with President Obama, the president of Chile—did you hear what he said? He said, I think the first lady of the U.S. is very good-looking. Yes. So, now, we‘re also at war with Chile.
(LAUGHTER)
JIMMY FALLON, COMEDIAN: It feels like to me that President Obama is playing soccer in Rio with kids, and Hillary Clinton seems to be weirdly stepping up almost like she‘s being very presidential. What is going down? He‘s making NCAA—he‘s doing his brackets on ESPN, I am like --
BRIAN WILLIAM, NBC NEWS: I think we‘ve seen a little political ‘tude coming out tonight.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He‘s even found some time in his busy schedule to fill out his March Madness brackets.
STEWART: Mr. President, Gadhafi is at the gates of Benghazi. Top officials are at the ready, sir. What shall we—we await your, what‘s that? Yes, no, I understand. BCU is surprisingly athletic.
(LAUGHTER)
STEWART: And they were without the veteran point guard. So, it wasn‘t that much—no, sir, I don‘t know what a Tar Heel is. I just—should we—I‘ll just tell everyone it is OK to bomb.
(LAUGHTER)
JAY LENO, COMEDIAN: The White House staff was not told the president was coming back early. You see what happened when he tried to get in the White House. This is weird. Look at this. Watch what he does here.
Here‘s the president. Look, the door is locked. He can‘t get in. And look, like every guy in America, look what he does. Look at that. How many times have we done that?
(LAUGHTER)
FALLON: I wish the president would send a tweet or something to let me know it‘s going to be OK or here‘s our goal.
President Obama is cutting his trip to Latin America short by a few hours, because of the situation in Libya. So, to everyone that said Obama doesn‘t care about Libya, you‘re wrong, he cares three hours worth.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
O‘DONNELL: Who was that last guest on “Fallon”?
You can have THE LAST WORD online at our blog, THELASTWORD.MSNBC.com.
You can follow my tweets @Lawrence.
“THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW” is up next. Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, TRMS HOST: You know, Lawrence, I ended up making Jimmy feel better about that whole thing by making him a cocktail called the monkey gland right there live on television after that discussion.
O‘DONNELL: Well, that should do it.
MADDOW: He found it very relaxing.
O‘DONNELL: I‘m sure he did. I‘m awaiting mine.
(LAUGHTER)
MADDOW: Stop by later. I will have some extra for you.
END
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