Occupy protesters in Indianapolis are gearing up to use the media spotlight on Sunday’s Super BowlXLVI to rally for union rights outside the statehouse. Earlier this week, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed a so-called "right to work" measure into law that critics say will result in lower wages and diminished collective bargaining rights. Indiana workers have received the backing of the National Football League Players Association, which has called "right to work" "a political ploy designed to destroy basic workers’ rights." We’re joined from Indiana by Tithi Bhattacharya, an associate professor of South Asian History at Purdue University and a protester who is taking part in Occupy the Super Bowl. "It is absolutely shameful that the legislature passed a law that condemns unions and is now using the city to showcase Indianapolis while ordinary people in Indiana are completely opposed to this law," Bhattacharya says.

Transcript:

JUAN GONZALEZ: We ...

Dear Gov. Mitch Daniels and your Republican Brethren,

Your response to President Obama’s State of the Union last night was deceitful, historically tenuous, and politically unsophisticated. George Orwell once said that “in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

M.D. "The percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades.”

TRUTH: Daniels speaks truth without context. Yes, the unemployment rate is indeed the highest it has been since 1983, but it has actually fallen by 1.5% since its peak in December, 2009.

M.D. “In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt.  And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead.”

TRUTH: Over the course of President Obama’s first three years he and Congress increased the national debt by 41%. And in Ronald Reagan’s first three years? You guessed it. He increased the national debt by 55%. 

M.D. “The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy.”

TRUTH: Yes, but since 1980 federal spending as a percentage of GDP has changed very little. Since Reagan’s first term Republicans presidents have spent on average 21.53% of GDP on federal programs, Democrats, 21.6%.

M.D. ...