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During this week's vice presidential debate, Paul Ryan reprised a line Republicans have used repeatedly in making the case for a Romney presidency.

"Mitt Romney -- his experience, his ideas, his solutions -- is uniquely qualified to get this job done," Ryan said in his closing statement. "At a time when we have a jobs crisis in America, wouldn't it be nice to have a job-creator in the White House?"

The central argument at the heart of Romney's candidacy is that he knows how to create jobs and President Obama doesn't. To buttress that claim, Romney points to his career in the private sector, as a Wall Street buyout specialist and venture capitalist at the firm Bain Capital. Bain Capital, of course, specialized mostly in leveraged buyouts -- debt-financed investments in companies that often resulted in bankruptcy, off-shoring and layoffs.

Since those aspects of Romney's business career are less politically palatable, he focuses instead on the few start-ups he helped provide seed funding for -- brands we all recognize, like Sports Authority and Staples.

The problem, however, with spotlighting those businesses is that their success hinges fundamentally on a premise that is perhaps just as unpalatable as the worst excesses of private equity. Those large retail chains exploit the efficiencies of scale to offer the same goods and services that much smaller businesses do, but at much lower costs.

Westgate Resorts CEO David Siegel came under fire this week for sending an email to his employees demanding that they vote for Mitt Romney and threatening to downsize the company if they don't. But Siegel's email isn't an outlier. It fits a pattern of imperious CEOs attempting to marshal the support of their employees in pursuit of their own political interests.

Up w/ Chris Hayes has exclusively obtained an email sent by the CEO of a Florida-based software firm, ASG Software Solutions, to his over 1,000 employees asking them to vote for Romney for president and suggesting that their jobs may be at stake if Romney doesn't win. The subject line of the email, sent by ASG President and CEO Arthur Allen on Sept. 30, asks: "Will the US Presidential election directly impact your future jobs at ASG? Please read below."

Koch Industries, the multi-billion-dollar company owned by conservative brothers Charles and David Koch, sent a mailing to its 50,000 employees earlier this month offering guidance on how to vote in this year's presidential election. The documents were obtained by In These Times magazine and provided to Up w/ Chris before publishing their report.

The packet sent to employees includes a letter, dated October 1st, from Koch Industries president and Chief Operating Officer David Robertson. Robertson writes:

Dear co-worker,

While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit. If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences. ... It is essential that we are all informed and educated voters. Our future depends on it.

The packet includes editorials blasting the Obama administration, written by Charles and David Koch for newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. And then there's the flier it includes, containing information on early voting options and voter registration deadlines. The flier contains this passage:

The following candidates in your state are among the candidates who have received support from a Koch company or KOCHPAC, the employee political action committee of Koch companies.

Just beneath that passage, the document lists the Koch brothers' favored candidates for president and vice president: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Tomorrow on Up w/ Chris, we'll examine Mitt Romney's crowning achievement when it comes to job creation: Staples.  We'll talk with Staples founder Tom Stemberg about Romney's Staples record, and take a close look at the types of jobs big retail chains like Staples offer. We'll also discuss the trend of CEOs ordering their employees to support particular candidates, and share some breaking news about the Koch brothers. And we'll dive into the polling industry with Nate Silver of The New York Times, who will provide us with the latest news on what the polling says about the presidential election.

Joining Chris at 8 AM ET on MSNBC will be:

Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight), Founder of FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver’s Political Calculus and author of “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t.”

Thomas Stemberg, founder of Staples, Managing General Partner of the Highland Consumer Fund.

Sarita Gupta (@saritasgupta), Executive Director of Jobs with Justice and Executive Director of American Rights at Work.

Josh Barro (@jbarro), Lead Writer for Bloomberg View's "The Ticker."

David W. Moore, Senior Fellow at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, Policy Critic at iMediaEthics.org and Former Managing Editor and Senior Editor of the Gallup Poll.

Maya Wiley, Founder and President of the Center for Social Inclusion.

Zephyr Teachout, Professor at the Fordham University School of Law.

Monica Youn, Brennan Center constitutional fellow at the New York University school of law where she focuses on election law and First Amendment issues.

Alec MacGillis, senior editor for "The New Republic" and currently serving as the magazine's correspondent for the 2012 campaign.

:: Blogged by Katherine Guthrie (@kguth1130), production assistant Up w/ Chris Hayes ::

by Chris Hayes Story of the Week, Up w/ Chris Hayes

ABC's Martha Raddatz did, I thought, on the whole, a pretty good job moderating Thursday night's vice presidential debate, particularly when asking questions on her area of expertise, foreign policy. But her final question of the night, about the negativity and sordidness of electoral politics, really bothered me.

Here's what she asked: 

I recently spoke to a highly decorated soldier who said that this presidential campaign has left him dismayed. He told me, quote, "the ads are so negative and they are all tearing down each other rather than building up the country." What would you say to that American hero about this campaign? And at the end of the day, are you ever embarrassed by the tone? 

 That soldier, of course, isn't alone: Lots of Americans feel the same way. I've heard the same thing from random voters I've interviewed in every campaign I've covered. And it's a recurring theme among the political press paid to cover politics to bemoan the nastiness and negativity of the thrust and parry of electoral politics. But it's an impulse we should collectively resist, because it contains the kernel of an insidious view of the value of democracy and diplomacy and bureaucracy and the manifold ways that we as human beings channel and resolve conflict in a non-violent fashion.

 The same distaste for the plodding, clunky, at times flat-out ugliness of process in Raddatz's question was also on display in Paul Ryan's repeated attacks on the administration's UN-based diplomacy on Iran.

It's true that the UN can be maddeningly dysfunctional, that the constitution of the security council is an accident of history and that Russia's objections to any and all US proposals can seem to Americans truculent and spiteful, but what, exactly is the alternative? The answer is violence, war, death, bloodshed. 

On Sunday's Up w/ Chris Hayes, we'll examine the praise political leaders shower on "small business" as the engine of economic growth, and we'll investigate what really qualifies as a "small business." Also: According to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll, the most important issue for voters in this election is the economy. The second most important? Social issues, which were glaringly absent from Wednesday's presidential debate. The candidates failed to address gun control, climate change, immigration and women's rights, among other topics. We'll discuss the topics that were left out of the debate. And: During the Republican primaries, Romney shifted right on immigration, advocating policies he claimed would cause "illegal aliens" to "self-deport." Now he has tacked to the center in order to appeal to undecided, independent voters. Amid all this, The New York Times has announced that it will continue to use the terms "illegal immigrants" and "illegal immigration."

Joining Chris tomorrow at 8 AM ET on MSNBC will be:

Democratic Rep. Peter Welch, who holds Vermont's only House seat and serves as chief deputy whip in the Democratic caucus.

Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead), comedian and co-creator of "The Daily Show."

Jose Antonio Vargas (@joseiswriting), Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and founder of the Define American campaign.

Rebecca Traister (@rtraister), contributor to to the New York Times Magazine and Salon.com. Author of "Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women."

Brooke Gladstone (@OTMbrooke), co-host and managing editor of WNYC's "On the Media."

JJ Ramberg (@jjramberg), host of MSNBC's "Your Business" and co-author of "It's Your Business: 183 Essential Tips that Will Transform Your Small Business."

Ro Khanna, former deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Commerce and author of "Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America's Future."

Chris Rabb,(@chrisrabb) adjunct professor for the Fox School of Business at Temple University and author of "Invisible Capital: How Unseen Forces Shape Entrepreneurial Opportunity."

Maria Hinojosa (@maria_hinojosa) rotating anchor for PBS' "Need to Know," executive producer for "America by the Numbers with Maria HInajosa," anchor and executive producer of NPR's "Latino USA," winner of 2012 John Chancellor award for Excellence in Journalism.

John McWhorter, professor of linguistics and American studies at Columbia University, contributing editor at the "New Republic" and "Daily News" columnist.

:: Blogged by Katherine Guthrie (@kguth1130), production assistant for Up w/ Chris Hayes ::

During Wednesday night's presidential debate, Mitt Romney sought to cast himself as a crusader for financial reform, championing tough new Wall Street regulations and sparring with President Obama over delays in the implementation of several key provisions at the heart of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Romney also sought to paint the president as an ally of Wall Street banks, charging that Dodd-Frank enshrined the status of the "Too Big To Fail" financial institutions, thus guaranteeing future taxpayer bailouts. Dodd-Frank, Romney claimed, "designates a number of banks as 'too big to fail,' and they're effectively guaranteed by the federal government. This is the biggest kiss that's been given to New York banks I've ever seen. This is an enormous boon for them."

There is, perhaps, a legitimate critique to make of the President's signature financial reform bill -- specifically, that it didn't go far enough in constraining the power of the nation's biggest banks, and that it should have broken up banks deemed "too big to fail."

Nonetheless, Romney's argument is disingenuous. For one thing, Dodd-Frank actually subjects those "too big to fail" banks to much stricter regulatory scrutiny and capital requirements. And it doesn't guarantee that they'll be propped up taxpayers (in fact, it gives federal authorities the power to wind down those banks if they are ever in danger of collapsing).

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton, responded Saturday to baseless allegations that the Obama administration may have manipulated the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly jobs report to make it look better than it actually was, calling those allegations "literally absurd."

In an interview on Up w/ Chris Hayes Saturday, Stiglitz said the accusations leveled by Republicans and their supporters on Wall Street -- including Rep. Allen West of Florida, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch and former Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes -- were outlandish and contradicted a broad consensus among economists of all party affiliations that the jobs numbers are not influenced by political calculations.

"No president, maybe except Nixon, would actually try to change what the Bureau of Labor Statistics does," Stiglitz said. "These are really independent statistical agencies, and the idea that they would do that is, I say, literally absurd."

Stiglitz recalled his time working in the Clinton White House, explaining that there was a long history of insulating the economic metrics from political pressure. "The history and the culture of these independent agencies is extraordinarily strong," Stiglitz said. "We felt absolutely very strongly, and I think this is bipartisan, that you don’t monkey with the numbers, because they would destroy your credibility. And the one thing that we still have is credibility in the numbers."

by Chris Hayes Story of the Week, Up w/ Chris Hayes

The contemporary Republican party faces a fundamental political problem and it is this: the policy position to which the party is most committed is very unpopular. Over the last decade the single most urgent, durable domestic priority of the Republican Party is reducing taxes on wealthy Americans. If there is one thing you can bank on when the Republicans are in power, it's that.

 It happened twice during George W. Bush's terms, in which he pushed through tax cuts that totaled a combined $2.74 trillion. When those tax cuts were set to expire in 2010, Republicans announced they would happily let taxes rise for everyone, and let unemployment benefits expire—an unprecedented move under such dire conditions—rather than raise taxes for the top 1%.

They won that standoff and got their way, leading to at least $225 billion in tax cuts for the top 1% over the last two years. Once Republicans took the House, they moved quickly to vote for the Ryan budget, which passed the House the first time on a vote of 235-193. All but four Republicans voted for it, and it would have cut taxes for those at the top even further. The Ryan budget died in the Senate, but undeterred, earlier this year Ryan unveiled a second version of his budget, this one would have cut more than $1.76 trillion from the taxes of the top one half of the top 1% over ten years.

Which brings us to the current campaign. During the Republican primary every candidate in the field offered tax cuts that, it turned out, would most benefit the wealthy. A number of the plans proposed - Cain's, Gingrich's - came right out and said explicitly that they lowered taxes for the wealthiest. I suppose it's to Mitt Romney's credit that he did not have the most cruelly regressive tax plan in the primary. But it's under-appreciated that he is currently proposing at least three major separate tax cuts, all of which would disproportionately benefit the rich.

First, he's proposing that all of the Bush tax cuts be made permanent, which would mean a tax cut of $3 trillion for the wealthiest over just the next ten years. Second, he's proposing to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. The Tax Policy Center estimates that just over half of the corporate tax burden ultimately falls on the top 1%, so Romney's plan amounts to a cut of $43-thousand for each household in the top 1%. And then there's the now famous $5 trillion tax cut Mitt Romney is, or at least was proposing, which he says isn't a tax cut because he'll close unspecified loopholes and deductions.

Tomorrow on Up w/ Chris Hayes we'll be dissecting Wednesday night's presidential debate. We'll examine the "Obama brand," look back at the president's past debate performances and discuss the similarities between Mitt Romney's sudden tack to the left and President George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism." We'll also examine the return of "fuzzy math" when it comes to Romney's and Ryan's tax plans. And we'll look at one of the most galling moments of the entire debate: Romney casting himself as a crusader for financial reform, despite fierce Republican opposition to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill.

Joining Chris at 8 AM ET on MSNBC will be:

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), currently serving her 11th term in Congress, senior member of the House Committee on Financial Services, ranking member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets & Government Sponsored Enterprises, chief deputy whip.

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist, a professor at Columbia University, and author of the book "The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future."

Karen Hunter, (@karenhunter) MSNBC Contributor, distinguished Lecturer at the Film and Media department at Hunter College, formerly of the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Daily News editorial board.

Dedrick Muhammad,Senior Economic Director at the NAACP

Joy Reid, (@TheReidReport) MSNBC contributor and managing editor of TheGrio.com, a division of NBC News.

Avik Roy, (@aviksaroy) a member of Mitt Romney's Health Care Policy Advisory Group, Senior Fellow at The Manhattan Institute and author of "The Apothecary", the Forbes blog on health care and social insurance reform.

Alexis Goldstein, (@alexisgoldstein) a former vice president at Merill Lynch and now an Occupy Wall Street activist.

:: Blogged by Katherine Guthrie (@kguth1130), production assistant for Up w/ Chris Hayes ::

On tomorrow's Up w/ Chris Hayes, we'll be discussing the Supreme Court's return to Washington -- and its absence from the presidential campaign. We'll look ahead to some of the landmark cases on the docket in the next term, gleaning clues to possible outcomes from the justices' past decisions. We'll also examine President Obama's speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week, where he offered a vigorous defense of free speech in the same city where "anti-jihad" ads have been making news.

Joining Chris tomorrow at 8 AM ET on MSNBC will be:

Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy), activist and award-winning columnisr. Eltahawy was arrested on Tuesday night after spray-painting over one of the controversial "anti-jihad" ads appearing in New York City subway stations.

Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin),  author of "The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court," senior legal analyst at CNN and staff writer at "The New Yorker."

Nan Aron, president of Alliance for Justice, which she founded in 1979.

Barbara Arnwine, President and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, member of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Equal Justice Works.

Akhil Amar, Sterling Professor of law and political science at Yale University where he teaches constitutional law at both Yale College and Yale Law School, author of "America's Unwritten Constitution: the Precedents and Principles We Live By."

Elise Boddie, director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

:: Blogged by Katherine Guthrie (@kguth1130), production assistant for Up w/ Chris Hayes, and Sal Gentile (@salgentile), segment & digital producer for Up w/ Chris Hayes. ::

Jamilah King of Colorlines.com, Mike Pesca of National Public Radio, and Bill Fletcher of the Center for Labor Renewal join Up w/ Chris Hayes to talk about the NFL referee lockout.

Ro Khanna, author of "Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America's Future," joins Up w/ Chris Hayes to discuss examples of how President Obama's uptick in the polls could be related to a more robust economy.

By Sal Gentile and Madeleine Martino Fox

A key component of the success of Up w/ Chris's first year has been our incredible online community. Each week, thousands of smart, dedicated fans gather on Twitter to join our on-air discussion. They call themselves #uppers, and the growth of the hashtag has been nothing less than a phenomenon.

Mentions of the #uppers hashtag on Twitter have skyrocketed from just 11 the first time the hashtag was used in October 2011 to over 7,000 when Paul Ryan was announced as Mitt Romney's running mate in August. And the hashtag trends nationally for virtually the entirety of every episode of Up w/ Chris. As The New York Times put it in a profile of the show in June, "Like Deadheads or Trekkies, fans of the program cluster under a common nickname: Uppers."

To celebrate our one-year anniversary last weekend, we flew Wyeth Ruthven, the creator of the #uppers hashtag, to New York to watch the program -- and to tabulate his well-known hourly counts of #uppers mentions -- from the Up w/ Chris studio. While he was here, we talked to Wyeth about the birth and stunning growth of the #uppers hashtag, the milestones in the growth of the #uppers community and how the weekly #uppers conversation has changed the way viewers interact with the show. As Wyeth put it: "Up with Chris Hayes is like a conversation with footnotes."

:: Sal Gentile (@salgentile) is a segment & digital producer for Up w/ Chris Hayes, and Madeleine Martino Fox is a video producer. ::