we owe the ambassador more than that and our eye mustn't be distracted. that's "hardball" for nouchlt thank you so much for being with us. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. good evening from new york. lawmakers tonight are planning their return to washington, d.c. amidst the blizzard that has covered much of the country. congress is back in session on monday and when they return, there is one item of business at the top of the priority list. a three-month extension to federal emergency long-term unemployment benefits. unconscious bly, republicans blocked democrats attempts to extend federal emergency unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed in the budget deal hammered out before christmas break. as a result, 1.3 million people

were cut off from their benefits three days after christmas and almost two million more could be cut off in the first six months of 2014. so, why, you might ask, are republicans doing this? it's a bit hard to answer because they haven't been exactly taking to the mike toc e microphones to explain, but here's rand paul. >> i do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks they're paid for. if you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers. you're causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy. >> paul is not to put too fine a point on it, full of it. you only get federal unemployment benefits if you are actively seeking work and the millions of americans who are unemployed, they are by and large, not choosing to be unemployed. right now, there are almost three unemployed people for every job open. long-term unemployment is at its

highest level in 30 years. in fact, while congressional republicans are doing is entirely unprecedented. >> we as a country have never cut off emergency unemployment benefits when long-term unemployment was this high. >> now, the reason congress has never failed to extend federal emergency unemployment benefits with unemployment this high is that the program actually keeps people in the workforce. how do we know? last year, north carolina decided to run a little experiment. governor mcrory signed a benefit that sharply cut the state's benefits and as a result, north carolina's unemployment rate dropped dramatically from 8.8% to 7.4% between july and november. but here's the thing. that drop came because the state's labor force shrank. in other words, people just stopped looking for work. gave up. quit. it's not just happening in north carolina. right now, hundreds of thousands

of people are are dropping out of the workforce each month. they are called in technical terms, discouraged workers. they are millions of americans who our political class and especially republican party, has chosen to discard. to take their talents and abilities and discussions to our economy and toss them into a national dumpster fire for no good reason. so, when congress returns on monday, first item on harry reid's agenda is a three-month extension of federal emergency unemployment insurance. the bill will give retroactive benefits to the 1.3 million people who lost benefits three days after christmas and extend them for hundreds of thousands more through 2015. who is stopping that from happening. harry reid plans to bring up for a bill on monday because of ru teen abuse in the filibuster, right now, looks like he has all

55. one republican who's cosponsoring a bill. nevada's unemployment rate is a whopping -- over 17,000 people in the state lost benefits. over 20,000 will stop receiving checks in the first six months of 2014 if congress does not act. dean heller is -- democrats will need four more to break the fall. keep in mind, this is a filibuster of unemployed people looking for work. it will likely come down to these four. republican senator mark kirk whose state of illinois has a rate of 8.7%, where over 80,000 people lost benefits in late december and almost 90,000 more will lose benefits in 2014. here's rob portman, rate of 7.4%, almost 40,000 people lost benefits in his state in december with even more set to lose in 2014. susan collins of maine, who has

voted for multiple extensions in the past and lisa mer cow ski who said she would be open for extension. tonight, we asked all four senators to join us so they could tell the people of their states on where they stand on letding their unemployment benefits disappear. two of them said no. two did not respond. now, when you ask republicans how they could possibly not vote for an extension, they start to voice concerns. around 6 pntd 5 billion for the extension being voted on on monday. republicans are saying they want to off set to pay. rob portman told us we are -- so we don't add to our debt. senator doesn't mean the sit is

falling or that the cost could be off set by ending the program, subsidize wealthy fa farmers. or to illustrate visually, here's the difference between the current budget and the budget with the emergency unemployment benefits. it's hard to make out. but in human terms, that difference looks like this. >> devastating. >> overwhelming emotions as they wake up without unemployment insurance benefits today. >> how do i feed my four children? how do i feed the dogs? my husband? everything and it's so overwhelming that you don't know where to start. >> so, mark kirk, rob portman, susan collins, when you get back to washington, d.c. on monday, how about doing your jobs so other folks can get back to work as well? joining me now, john nichols, washington correspondent of the

nation. you are baseded in the midwest and kor the midwest for a while. what do you think the politics are like for mark kirk and rob portman on this extension? >> i think they're pretty intense. i think you identified the right folks. i might also throw senator toomey into that mix as well. one of the things that you have to understand and i think that most of your viewers do, is that the great lake states and that's what you're really talking about there, those states have suffered incredible industrialization. so, in a number of cities, places that don't get covered much in national media, western new york, head across, they've had a lot of job losses and people have been put into very tough situations. right now, it's some of the cold e weather that we've had in years. lot of snow. this is not a time when businesses are putting on new workers. it's not a time when it's going

to be easy to find jobs. and so, it's very, very clear to the voters in those states that these benefits have to be extended. i think the pressure on those republican senators will be quite intense. >> the interesting question to me is whether the political power of this group of people who are in the broad sense say -- are relatively small, whether the plight of those folks reverberates out past those directly affected. people understand they're next on chopping block or they have friends who might have long-term unemployment. it's going to be families that are on long-term unemployment and whether that creates enough political power to push pressure on a party intent on blocking this. >> well, i think it does and this is the important thing for democrats to understand. this is an unconscionable compromise at the start. to pass this budget and not to

get those jobless benefits extended and so, benefits made a promise. it was a commitment that when they got back, they would go to the wall on this one. now, everybody knew they were going to have to get some republicans to make it happen and the republicans who are in play here, it's clear who they are, where they live. to my mind, the message has to be one that's very focused, very intense, i would hope. that groups engaged, unions, community groups, engage on those issues. and one thing to understand, chris, is that these votes are concentrated in certain areas. and a lot of folks who aren't look i looking for an extension of benefits is because they have a job. they retire, they understand the reality of jobless benefits. there are a lot of places that have had a boom and bust economy

and folks have been through this. it's very real for a lot of voters. >> thank you so much. joining me now, politics editor of business insider. i feel like there's a bunch of things we point to in the obama e era as moments of radical departure of what's happened before and this long-term benefit extension is one of them. this was sort of a routine thing and now, it's not. what is the explanation? >> i think there are two things that happened. one is that this recovery has just taken so long. it's unprecedented that we are more than four years after the end of the recession and we still have a long-term unemployment problem. i think you have to go back to the great depression. while we have this level of unemployment, long-term

unemployment, to extend for so many years after the extension of benefits. i think that's the political challenge. the other is that the republicans today view their defining challenge as being stopping us from turning into a nation of takers. broadly energized about the idea that people are living off government benefits, this is the root of the objective of obamacare, food stamps an unemployment benefits has gotten lumped in. >> we stake our ground as the pro taker side of the equation. i think the other issue here is is there is, there's this austerity mind set, which continues to squeeze every office on that capitol. even democratic and you're starting to see the democratic party, which i think joined the austerity caucus for a while, partly on political -- thought that had to be done. break away from it and say, okay -- and we are not looking

at a sea of red ink the way we were two, three years ago, we can afford over $6 billion over two months. >> i think unemployment benefits are designed to be a cyclical program. they are supposed to be exp expensive and deficit reducing, so you can wonder about other programs going astray. one thing i'd like to see is all of this should be rule based. they should just be triggered automatically. >> which is one of the things people talk about, things that are built into the policy. ben bernanke talking about fiscal policy and what the disaster it's been. outstanding fed chair. sitting in his kind of between the lines economist ease, basically saying this has been a disaster. congress needs to get their act together. i'm really curious to see what

the pressure looks like. congress is going to do event, harry reid is going to bring up his vote. >> it's going to be interesting to see, i'm interested to see how the republicans will play it. even if they vote, we're just going to have to come back and do this again. they need to come up with a longer term policy as to where pay thai stand. you get these statements like senator portman saying it needs to be paid for. the window, usually when talking about small amounts of money in the relative terms of fiscal budget, you can find an accounting change. >> right or just a small policy change to get three months of unemployment benefits. you can do a really small spending cut and have to come

back in three months, but probably hopefully we only need another 12 to 18 months of this extension. >> and that's the big question. to pass that, six months and nine months. at some point, you look at the american labor market and say, the thing is broken. right? or there is some deep problem that needs to be addressed as job number one, macro economic policy in this country, which is to get people back to work. >> you say it's broken or that the problems are completely structural. there are problems that can be dealt with throughout this. wee not there yet. the unemployment benefit extension will grow the economy and great kraet jobs, but in a normal economy, you have about two job analpplicants for everyb opening. >> the kitchen sink still firmly

grouted into the counter. if you are a supporter of the affordable care act, what do you say about? >> the government says they're not a religious organization, but actions and their faith say they are. >> when the people you care for look up at you, they want to see christ's face. you look down at them, you have to find christ's face. >> most sympathetic plaintiffs in all of litigation history. sisters of the poor versus obamacare and the next battle in the obamacare wars, ahead. your. fedex one rate. really makes my life easier. maybe a promotion is in order. good news. i got a new title. and a raise? management couldn't make that happen. [ male announcer ] introducing fedex one rate. simple, flat rate shipping with the reliability of fedex.

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some republicans might need convincing. what would you say to republican senators who are on the fence about voting for the unemployment insurance extension? tweet your answers or post it to facebook.com/allinwithchris. stay tuned. who are we? we are the thinkers.

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nine million. that is the estimated number of people who have gotten health insurance through the affordable care act. they are now finishing up day three of people with obamacare going to their doctors and believe me, if it was going poorly, we'd be hearing abt because no amount of net increase in human welfare or care can turn conservatives away from their obsession with destroyed the affordable care act and now that we've passed the website disaster stage and canceled plan stage, we entore 2014 with a new set of battle

lines. this week, the beckett fund for religious liberty successfully got a supreme court injunction in hopes of extempting their client, little sisters of the poor, from providing birth control coverage to their employees. obama has said the nuns could avoid having to offer contraception coverage by signing a form offered by the government. they say that is unacceptable. today in its filing with the supreme court, the obama administration urged the court to reject the lawsuit. in the meantime, 11 republican attorneys general are claiming the administration is breaking the law by making changes without going through congress, calling those flatly illegal. house majority leader eric cantor meanwhile is raising the specter of cyber attack, saying he will schedule a vote next week on a bill that will place more security requirements on health care.gov and targeting

three democratic senators up for re-election this year. this as conservative activists continue to appear in sky is falling stories. maggie mahar flagged one that appeared too catastrophic to be true. a profile of several quote obamacare losers, including one 26-year-old woman with multiple scler oasis who claimed insurance would cost her over 1,000 a month. not true. found her a plan that would cost $332 a month and after googling the names, she also found that three of the four people profiled, including the one with ms, were tea party activists and more sophisticated opponents were given data to use as ammuniti ammunition. it found people enrolled in medicaid were more likely to use the emergency room and not

necessarily for emergencies than their counterparts who weren't on medicaid. about 40%. this didn't come as a surprise. one medicaid doctor telling npr most states are already working on helping recipients get care in more appropriate settings. new year, same strategy, slightly different approach. joining me now, assistant professor of medicine, doctor, good to have you here. >> it's a pleasure to be here. >> the first question about the study is i really wanted to talk about the study because i do not want us to be in a bubble of denial about what evidence is saying about the benefits of insurance or have a situation in which they have a limited amount of money to expand medicaid, they determined by lottery, which gave you the perfect circumstances for a good, controlled experiment and they're looking at the outcomes

now and showing that people who got covered under medicaid were going to the er more. that covers against the arguments, a lot of liberals and democrats have made about insurance expansion. >> so, you have to look at the timeline. this actually goes against what happened in massachusetts. you will have a blip. and they suddenly have a way of getting in. they have chronic medical problems. if you continue now and look at what's happened in oregon since then, actually in this last year, they decreased by 18%. >> in the first two years of the expansion, you've had people who haven't haddock tors and people who know how to get care from the er. oregon then set benchmarks and said, okay, we don't want people going to the e.r. that's not the best place for people to get primary care. they've changed their delivery

system and caught incentives to drive down the number of e.r. visits and that's been working. >> they did two things. they created these ccos, similar to pcos that are being developed and really put a big emphasis on primary care. that's really the key to the long-term both decrease in cost and held outcomes because that's coordinated care. that is a primary care physician driving it. that is a whole team of people with chronic health conditions to make sure that you don't run out of your medications, that your keeping your numbers under control. >> i think there was an argument being made by people in the 2008 election. if i'm honest, i think i probably admitted it myself at certain times. the idea was that you get people coverage, they don't have to go

to the emergency room. even reich schneider in his own state, it's this idea when people get covered, they don't go to the e.r. or cost us all because the cost is being distributed. >> but the e.r. gets paid. it's not longer that the e.r. is in disarray because they're never getting paid and they're chasing people with no money. >> or being forced to do collections and suing people. i covered stories in chicago when i was there of people being hounded to death's door to recoup medical costs. >> and they can be referred or admitted and have it covered. all those things work. then the other thing that happens is we can now expand, don't forget that the aca is not swrus coverage. there's $9 billion to expand community health centers. expand their hours. you have to remember this is a disenfranchised population that has trouble getting to work. had trouble getting child care. they need expanded hours,

weekend hours. >> are we working on those things? that i think is the important thing to come out. coverage does not equal care. the affordable care act does stuff on the affordable side. is there the -- >> massachusetts did this. we need to learn what oregon has done since. they have data showing what's happened in the last two years and so if that study will keep going, they'll see that and that's really the lesson we need. we need to plan. we do need to create patient centered medical homes. >> and you need to have it as a political and policy objective to get people the care they need in the place that actually they will be accessible to them and that ends up having the side benefit of driving down costs. >> thanks for having me. >> was an nfl player fired for being a gay rights advocate? that story is ahead. avo: the volkswagen "sign then drive"

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i'm about to say something disturbing. we should round up all the gays, send them to an island and nuke it until it blows. that is a statement allegedly made by this man. minnesota vikings special teams coordinator who denies saying such a thing because quote, personally, i have gay family members. the accusation that he said that comes in this blockbuster tell all letter on deadspin.com written by former vikings punter

chris cluey. he made headlines last summer when he came out against minnesota's gay marriage amendment, which would have defined marriage between one man and one woman. this transformed him into something of a gay rights activists. here he is on our own network o couple of months before that bill was struck down. >> gay people would like to get married and i think that's something when we look back and you look at history, which side were you on? on the side that supported this or did you try to take people's rights away? >> his eight-year career came to an end in april, quote, i don't know if hi act vito m was the reason i got fired, however, i'm pretty confident it was. he said he was fired by mike -- and two cowards. former head coach and general manager who lacked the fortitude to disagree with mike on a touching subject. earlier today, the vikings announced a former chief justice of the minnesota supreme court

will help investigate his allegations, saying in part it is extremely important for the vikings organization to react immediately and comprehensively. he feels that if he wasn't so outspoken, he would still be in the league and at least one other nfl player agrees. >> would he probably be in the league today had he continued to go speak at schools and education or fitness or if he continued to go hunger drivers or cancer awareness type of stuff? yeah, he probably still would. now he feels like he can tell the truth. >> joining me now, mike, sports correspondent for npr. he's a fascinating figure because he was so uncommonly outspoken. in a way i can't real another being as outspoken as he was, then this bombshell tell all thing gets 800,000 views in a

matter of a few hours. and then, the most interesting revealing, the vikings reacting as panicked and strongly as they appear to today. >> yeah. as outspoken and in the manner he was outspoken. i think that's a big part of it. i agree with him on the gay marriage issue. the way he said it he's a provock tor and he provoked a reaction. i think he had to know that especially in these button down nfl, that sort of thing is going to make some people uncomfortable. they shouldn't have to bend to him. he shouldn't have to bend to them. >> it sounds like you're saying he had it coming. >> no, i don't think he had it coming. i think it would be wrong to think, wow, i'm surprised this happened. it's the nfl. he's the only one taking a stance o boldly. he wrote an article for dead spin. i'm pro profanity.

it certainly offended people within the nfl to the point where he kind of rewrote the article in the local minnesota parp. his own father said, chris, tone it down. the language. there was an incident where his gm said, chris, tone it down. now, if he was a great punter he would be in the nfl and the thing he didn't turn it down on on a cause everybody agreed with. >> this is partly about the story of cluey, whose career looks like t may be over. there's also the issue of the future of this. i think it's a test case for the nfl, about what is tolerated and what's not. if he said the kind of thing that chris said he said, if you said that in this building at this organization or any other firm that i know, that would be a fireable offense. it's a rare test case to me what happens to him if they -- >> everyone in the vikings is --

that's what you would expect them to go. it's always us against them. interestingly, the owner of the vikings shook his hand and said, you know, admire your stance on this. i think what he did by saying mike should never work again, who knows why or if he said that. it seemed like a one time utterance and here he is saying it's not a rich man. he's a special teams coach in the nfl. this is my whole life on the line. he's a bomb thrower. this is what he does. this is the reaction he kind of wanted, i think. >> how long do you think things have evolved in terms of these two? locker room culture as it pertains to acceptance of gay athletes and gay people in general and front office concern about getting right on these issues. >> yeah, and also a concern of we have a controversial ballot issue here in minnesota. wow, one of our guys, i read a

really good book and he talked to the defensive koocoordinatord he said this is the most antigay environment i've been around. he acknowledged that and said for a day, we'd worry about it, but we're a brother hood and we'd come around. i think if there were a person in the nfl, the fact they're a team would trump anything. >> that's going to be the big test. thanks so much. high times and high dungeon, ahead. so there i was again, explaining my moderate to severe chronic plaque psoriasis to another new stylist. it was a total embarrassment. and not the kind of attention i wanted. so i had a serious talk with my dermatologist

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this, the time i was almost arrested for pot possession, that's coming up next. [ male announcer ] this is kevin. to prove to you that aleve is the better choice for him, he's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with him all day as he goes back to taking tylenol. i was okay, but after lunch my knee started to hurt again. and now i've got to take more pills. ♪ yup. another pill stop. can i get my aleve back yet? ♪ for my pain, i want my aleve. ♪ [ male announcer ] look for the easy-open red arthritis cap.

in the nation, what's precious to you is precious to us. ♪ love is strange so when coverage really counts, count on nationwide insurance. we put members first. join the nation. ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ breaking news on this friday evening. it turns out that one of the most famous and widely -- columnists, david brooks cops to having smoked weed with high school buddies before -- out

with the drug. for a little while during my teenage years, my friends and i smoked marijuana. it was fun. we had fond memories of us being silly. but then, he writes he hand his friends moved away from it because well, smoking pot made you a loser. instead, he and his home mys graduated to love and literature. the citizens of colorado are nurturing a moral e kole ji in which it is a bit harder to be the certain person we want to be. the one kind of person most of us don't want to be is a person caught in the criminal justice system and while i'm aware as other people's drug stories are about as interesting -- a fruitful round of discussion of the obvious fact that lots and lots and lots of people have and do smoke pot who are not people

we consider criminals. so let me add my own story to the mix. in the summer of 2000 as a 21-year-old college student, by then girlfriend and now wife, thought it would be fascinating from to check out the 2000 republican national convention in philadelphia. my father-in-law is a journalist and had credentials, so we went down there, fresh off the amtrak, headed to the first union center and as we passed through the first check point, i put my bag through the x-ray machine, i remembered i had left a bag with about $30 worth of weed in it why? i don't know. i forgot it was there. i was 21. these things happen. i breathed a sigh of relief as the bag passed overwithout notice and as we skated through another check point, i thought, well, that was a close call. but then we reached the final

check point and i realized at this station, every bag was being searched. i put my bag down and watched with mounting dread and nausea as a philadelphia police officer went through one compartment, then a second, finally, a third where he withdrew my eyeglass case. he shook it, felt there was something inside, his head jerked back and he whirled around, holding his back to me, inspected the offending substance. he called over two others, conferring for what felt like a very long time. i thought about running, but then realized this was the most heavily policed acre of land in the entire united states. i told kate what was happening, then out of a sense of panic, i ran over to my father and blurted out, i had some weed in my bag and i think the cops just found it. my father-in-law was surprised. w why? and just as we were walking back towards the cops, the one who found the weed, turned around

and put the back down and looked at me. i reached out my hand to claim it, figures this would be the point he would slap cuffs on me and to my shock, he just looked at me impassively and i looked back and picked up my bag with the eyeglass case and weed inside and headed to the convention center. my father-in-law shook his head in amazement at both my stupidity and luck. i've rerun that incident since and why i have no idea the cop didn't arrest me and also gave me my weed back, my best case is he thought i could have been some senator or something and to arrest me would cause a bunch of headaches on a night he was mostly there to be sure no one was bringing weapons or explosives into that building and i can tell you as sure as i am sitting here before you if i was a black kid with corn rows instead of a why kid with glasses, my ass would have been

in the back of a squad car faster than you could say george w. bush, so yeah, david brooks, it had no consequence. but that's the entire point. it has little consequence for a lot f people. black and white people use marijuana as roughly the same rates, yet black people are are four tiles more likely to be arrested. so while thousands of junior david brooks' do bong hits in dorm rooms, there are thousands of kids on the south sides of chicago and compton getting their first charge on marijuana, getting entered into the system with a record and court date being marked early as a certain kind of person. just one in a number of insidious ways our laws are used to sort societies. you. you go to college. you. you go to court.

i'm pretty damn lucky i didn't get arresteded. i wish brooks realizes how lucky he was, too. more on the open secret of our drug laws double standard ahead. [ male announcer ] imagine this cute blob is metamucil. and this park is the inside of your body. see, the special psyllium fiber in metamucil actually gels to trap some carbs to help maintain healthy blood sugar levels. metamucil. 3 amazing benefits in 1 super fiber. open to innovation. open to ambition. open to bold ideas. that's why new york has a new plan -- dozens of tax free zones all across the state. move here, expand here, or start a new business here

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the white house this morning is geared up for some damage control. clarence thomas has smoked marijuana. >> on capitol hill this morning,

he pronounced his drug use old news. it created hardly a ripple in the senate. one politician after another echoed the white house's claim that the fact he smoked pot in college was inconscious. >> cofounder, coexecutive director, youth advocacy, comedian and actor, jordan carlos and deputy legal director at the aclu. here's what i think is important about the conversation that has emerged about kro c in the last few days and the brooks column, which has just been absolutely pillar read on the internet. is just the open secret of the fact of the use of marijuana everywhere you look along all strata of society and the fact that outside the context of being a cop with a number to hit op a corner in a poor

neighborhood, it's an open joke, a thing you recall. >> it's not a joke at all. this issue is comical, but on the other side, you've had ten million arrested in the last 15 years. ten million arrests, two, about 750,000 people arrested for marijuana use, so every year, we're arresting more people for marijuana usage than violent crimes. we're using the courts for something people either consider comical or many don't believe should be illegal and yet our resources are being put into that space, so it's something society has to look at because we're wasting resources, dollars and precious time. >> cops want to make their busts, right? >> well, they're told they have

to. >> right and then the prison system, that has to run on something. >> and for me, at least, i worry about that. if i ever did hand to hand in the street, see, i can't even pronounce it, i'm just so excited that washington and colorado, i can go there, no problem and buy. so -- >> and a lot of people are precisely for that reason. look at the chart of the u.s. prison population. just a really important graphic. like, look what happens. when you declare war on drugs, we start putting more people as a percentage of the population in jail than any other democracy. does the colorado policy address this problem? where it's like okay, the people at university of boulder are getting high in the dorm rooms, they're not getting busted. dealers in denver are getting

roll rolled up on the streets. does this address the problem? >> what's happening right now in colorado and washington is way more than just allowing recreational marijuana users to have access. it is about a sea change in how we are approaching drug abuse, drugs in our country. we are establishing a regulatory scheme in the way that we are doing with tobacco and alcohol. we haven't actually had a dent in the demand. what we need to now do is just as colorado and washington in society's dollars, taxpayer dollars, into education, health care, particularly in communities that have been robbed of these kinds of dollars ab where it's been diverted to criminal justice. it hasn't worked. and it goes way beyond marijuana. >> that is the key point. >> it's a mistake, right, for us to think oh, well, with

marijuana legalization, we are solving all these problems. that is not the case. we have a lot more work to do. this is really about a shift in paradigm and understanding that we cannot continue to invest in prisons. it has been a racial crisis and completely ineffective policy. >> and the hope is that this can open a con vversation. >> it's not like, job done. >> across rights, more people than any other nation in the world, but we want to look at is what is going on within the criminal justice system. arrests, prosecution and incarceration. the entire system needs to be rehabilitated and transformed. the hope is that this will allow us to look at marijuana, but also what does rehabilitation look like? corrections? >> it's like you criminalize people for being black or poor.

>> or young. and you must see that all the time. so, here, this to me is the real deep -- how much of this is our societies going to find ways to do this sorting process and the way it's found is the war on drugs and how much of it is the policy is actually driving. you see what i'm saying? michelle alexander's argument in the new jim crow is that we've been doing market in other ways, this has the way we've chosen now and you skreez the balloon and get a stratified society. >> i think it is about both of those things. way beyond minor drug offenses. racial stereotypes, i think we have to fundamentally rethink you know, our criminal justice

priorities. we have allowed the criminal justice system to basically become the catch all solution for too much in this country and his prayed, we have been able as a society to basically use our criminal justice system to prey upon black and brown communities to great devastation. even ones kind of far beyond, even the florida drug testing. fundamentally about the war on drugs and racial stereotypes. >> that's a perfect example of this kind of market. it's like, we all know the president smoked pot. did a little blow, but it's like, you want welfare, show me. >> that's part of the ramification. it's an entry into the criminal justice system. a conviction can mean you'll

lose certain jobs. there are serious ramifications. >> i don't think you'd ever have to take a drug test to apply for a mortgage. >> go introduce that. thank you all. rachel maddow starts now. >> that was such a brilliant an tech dote. >> thanks for staying with us. car companies make pianos. the same one that makes pianos makes motorcycles. i feel like -- if it was just motorcycle and piano company, but it's not. a whole bunch of companies have these kind of combined product lines. ld