company. television producer david simon. >> i don't think that you can call the american government anything other than broken at this point and i think it's at the legislative level. that's the part of the government that's been purchased. >> and the scholar and activist leads a march across new hampshire to clean it up. >> where in the constitution in the design of our government did anybody ever invision that money was going to have this amount of control in our system? >> funding is provided by, encouraging the renewal of democracy.

the ford foundation, working with visions on the front lines of social change worldwide. supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. the john d. and catherine t. mcarthur foundation. committed to building a more adjust and peaceful world. park foundation dedicating to heightening public awareness of critical issues. and by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america. designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. >> welcome. there's no way to say it nicely. the stinch of corruption hangs over american politics like smog over shanghai. every day brings new headlines. if it's not in new jersey, it's in new orleans where the former

mayor is convicted for taking bribes and kick backs and in our nation's capitol it's like a door and into the waiting arms of corporate mercenaries awaiting top dollar for services renders. and all the way money pours into political campaigns nonstop producing government of legalized debt. you would think all of this would be enough to turn everyone off and it has provoked dangerously widespread apathy. first, we're back with david simon, the former crime reporter turned television producer. he created two acclaimed series for hbo. treme about the struggle to rebuild post katrina new orleans and the wire, the story of crime

and pubbishmenishment in baltim. each showed how politics leave pour people at the mercy of a rigged system. >> you are immorale, are you not? you're feeding off the violence and the despair of the drug trade. you're stealing from themselves who are stealing the life blood from our city. you're a parasite who leeches off the culture of drugs. >> just like you. >> excuse me? >> i got the shotgun. i got the briefcase. it's all in the game, though, right? >> what i remember so vividly after watching that scene is that the law shrugged. that's quite often the effect of money and politics. the system works only for those that pay to play. who bought the rule making machinery of government. as david simon put it when he was here two weeks ago. >> you can buy these guys on the

cheap. capital has been at it a long time and the supreme court walked away from any responsibility to maintain democracy at that level. that's the aspect of government that's broken. >> he talked about this last fall in australia. >> the last job of capitalism having won all the battles against labor, having acquired the ultimate authority, almost the ultimate moral authority over what's a good idea or what's not, or what's valued and what's not, the last journey of capital has been to buy the electoral process, the one venue for reform that remained. and ultimately capital has purchased the government. >> your summation is grim by true. capital owns our politics. what do we do about it? >> if i could fix one thing, if i could concentrate and focus on

one thing and hope that by breaking the cycle you might start to walk this nightmare back, it would be campaign finance reform. the logic of citizens united in other decisions that are framed around that certainly our judicial branch has failed to value the idea of one man, one vote. you don't count more because you run a corporation and you can heave money in favor of your political fiphilosophy on to th project. >> free speech. >> you know what, everyone reacted the wrong way when they heard that decision. the chant from the left became corporations are people? corporations are not people. well, no, actually under the law, that's the reason for corporations. you know, they are, indeed, given the rights of individuals and that's why you form corporations and that's how the law streets them. they're sociopaths as people.

that's who they are. but if all you care about is your profit to the shareholders and nothing else in human terms you're probably a sociopath but okay they get to exist as -- no. it was speech is money. when you start equating speech with money and you see them as being comparable -- money is fundamentally the opposite of speech in many ways. speech, i mean, or it's a speech so foul it shouldn't be -- it shouldn't have the weight it has in our democracy. and that to me was the nails in the coffin. if you can't fix the elections so that they actually resemble a popular will, if the combination of the modernization of the elections a elections creates a legislation that doesn't meet the will of

the american people you have reached the end of democracy and we have. >> you were clear that capitalism is no blueprint for building the society. it's not a road to a just country you say. >> well, it's not. it's a tool for building wealth. if wealth is the only measure of your society -- i'm not saying it isn't a measure. but if wealth is the only measure of society and there's no distinction on how that wealth is going to be distributed among the various classes or how that wealth is going to be put to the needs of the society, or how the society is going to be protected from inevitable threat. if all of those things are not metrics and it's just about generating mass wealth, then, you know, what are we say something what are we saying about the human condition? what are we saying about our society's condition? >> how do you tame the greed? >> you have to do it

legislatively? and how do you do that when your legislative aspect has been purchased by the very capital being amassed? that's the problem. there isn't a teddy roosevelt confronting these. >> are you angry about this? >> aren't you? >> yes. listen i have a good life. >> same here. >> and i, you know, go to the playground with my kid. i watch the game on saturday. i'm not an angry person but i can't look at politics. >> you understand why so many people whose anger turns to resignati resignation. >> resignation or contempt for government as an idea. that's a luxury we don't have is basically either on one side it's people who think i can do well on my own and screw my neighbor and it's basically greed wrapping itself in the n mantel of a legitimate ideology or people saying the government

is my enemy. if it's not, that's the fight to have and that fight can't be had by walking away. you know, if 20% of the people in america end up voting in elections that they don't think matter and they're right, well, they'll be right but the democracy will die regardless. like i say, it's a fight worth having even if we're going to lose. but right now, i have to say, they have purchased so much and so deeply and the contempt for the idea of the popular will is so firm that the logical outcome a generation from now may be that people pick up a brick. i don't know what happens. nobody quite knows where it goes. revolution is all good when it's in theory. >> when the blood runs. >> yeah. first of all, the right people don't always get hit by the

right bricks. and second of all, as they're finding now, you fight for one thing and you get another. and i'm not saying i'm looking forward to the brick, but, you know, it is there at the bottom. if enough people opt out and enough people get angry and enough people start to find themselves deeply at the margins, increasingly it starts to span across racial and social lines to include them it will be an interesting dynamic. >> david, i don't know anyone who has made a more dire and dark -- >> no, no. >> i know but at the same time, you don't give up. you keep riwriting these to tel us. >> the stories are good.

it's stories i want to tell. >> right. well, in some, what i took was the idea that to commit to a unlikely cause or causes seems almost certain of defeat seems absurd but to not commit is also absurd given the situation. and only one choice of those two offers even the remote chance at dignity. but more than that, the idea that democracy works without there being a constant fight, without us -- you know, listen, people who walk away and say i'm not going to -- i'm not going to play this game by which i might lose or i wish the odds were stacked against me and want the lofty position of walking away and saying no more, than a rapid

decline in society. >> david simon, thank you for being with me. >> thank you for having me. >> it's time you meet lawrence. like you, he knows that capitalism is no blueprint for democracy and he is demonstrating the power of his conviction with boots on the ground, snow boots. he not only talks the talk, but he's walking the walk. last month, through winter's ice, sleet, and snow he led a two week march of patriotic americans from north to south down 185 miles of streets and roads in new hampshire. traditionally the site of the nation's first presidential primary. the march was to raise awareness

of the need for campaign finance reform including scr 10. that's a resolution to amend the u.s. constitution and overthrow citizens united. they're also asking all of the presidential candidates that will soon be haunting new hampshire a big question. how are you going to end the system of corruption in washington? this is just the beginning. more marches are planned in the state between now and 2016. this year's began symbolically. population 12. well-known to fans of american politics as the first town in the united states to cast it's presidential ballots. >> people have said this feels crazy to cross new hampshire in the middle of february. i feel like who is the crazy in

this story? we have a congress where members spend 30 to 70% of their time raising money. they live in an environment much like an elementary school where the buzzers go off and they race from their office to vote on issues and they don't know what they're voting on. they stand in an empty chamber giving speeches to nobody. it's a system that produces no progress so the people inside the system are the crazy onesment so if there's crazy here and i'm crazy for this march, then crazy knows crazy. if you think about every single important issue america has to address. on the right you care about tax reform or addressing issues of the deficit. on the left if you think about

climate change or real health care reform, whatever the issue is, if you look at the way our system functions right now, you have to see that there will be no sensible reform given the way we fund campaigns. >> no one directly cares that much about campaign finance reform or the issue of money in politics because it's not an issue that directly effects us. it's an issue that effects us through every other issue we care about. >> great day today. >> oh, yeah. essential for any walk to save democracy. >> both sides of the politic divide are embarrassed i think by the way in which the system functions but they have no clear resolve or will to do anything about it. so the only way we can do something is to force them to take it seriously.

so we are going to start at the place that the new hampshire primary will happen. so we're going to start a march. the march will be two weeks. new hampshire is an incredibly sophisticated political state. mainly because presidential candidates basically live here for two years of the presidential election cycle as they try to convince new hampshire to vote for them. >> new hampshire still is one of the few moments in the process of electing our president in which ordinary people can sometimes get to ask candidates real questions in an authentic and unscripted way. >> we want to create a movement of people who will make this the first issue by asking every single presidential candidate between now and january 2016 this one question, what will you do to end the system of corruption in washington. >> we have been looking a long

time to the kind of action that people had to pay attention to. they had to think about. we're hopeful that if they see people through the sleet and rain and snow in new hampshire in january, they'll stop and say, no. why would you do that? what's the purpose? what's the issue? and as they think about it, they'll be reminded that they too care about this issue. . >> the latest poll we have done found 96% of americans believe that the influence of money on our political system has got to be changed. there's no issue in american politics that has that support. but at the same time, 91% of americans believe this issue will never be solved. 91% believe there's no way to beat this issue because the issue is so tied up with power right now that it can't be reformed.

>> it depresses me to think when i'm leaving my children. i'm past the point of anger. we all had a sense of futility until this march came through and for us it seems to be a window of possibility. >> one of the great challenges for anyone that cares about campaign finance reform is to make it a kitchen table issue. it is to link it directly to people's lives in a real way. so show them that the foreclosure crisis next door links back to money and politics. that the cost of prescription drugs links back to a pharmaceutical lobby. >> in general, people support us

whether they know it or not. the sense of frustration and dissatisfaction with the total dysfunction of the government and i think everybody right on agrees, yes, money is one of the big problems. >> the simplest thing that money buys you in washington and that everybody admits it buys you is access. so you're a congress person. you have been on the road all day. maybe giving speeches and meeting people. you get home and there's a pile of messages of people you need to call. and among those people are the people that have given you $5,000 in your congressional campaign. who are you going to call first? >> so your priorities get bent in the direction of money. when you step back and you ask where in the constitution, in the design of our government did anybody ever envision that money was going to have this amount of

control in our system. >> the word democracy means people rule. but in this system, it's at least the case that money rules as much as people rule and if that's the case, it's not a democracy. >> even though the framers were pretty bad about race and certainly didn't understand sex equality, the one thing they got was class. they understood the biggest risk was to create an aristocracy. so they insisted that the people meant not the rich more than the poor. we have completely betrayed that commitment. >> this issue is about empowerment. it's about feeling like ideas can move forward based on their merits instead of based on who holds the most power. >> so the incentive inside the fund-raising process is no longer aligned with the institution that was meant to represent the people as a whole.

the only way to fix that is to change it. make it so that instead of worrying about what the tiniest fraction of the 1% care about, they are worrying about what the vast majority of americans care about. the solution. to change the way we fund elections by supporting small dollars so that instead of the 120th of 1%, they raise money from the vast majority of americans to spread out the influence just like we spread out the vote. that would change the way we fund elections and radically change the way congress does. this is not a one time struggle that we can solve and then just forget. this last election cycle saw a lot of super pack money but it was the dry run just getting it's legs. i fear 2016 is going to be the year of the super pack where they are extremely effective in raising unbelievable amounts of

money from a completely tiny, tiny set of merges. tiny set of americans. >> when we decided to do this, we didn't expect there would be more than five or ten at the most people that would be marching. but as we have gone through the town or have been going down roads, the number of people that have reacted passionately or vigorously as we see their signs and they have read about us or heard about us on television. people honking horns or putting signs in front of their house. >> it is raw human suffering to march in january. we've seen that. sleet, snow, blizzards. sub zero temperatures.

the inevitable question, so what? they got picked up by every single media outlet in the state including every. >> paul: -- including every paper at a counts. and then also beyond that. >> after this march we're going to begin to organize around the state where people get trained. how do you ask the question, what will you do to end the system of corruption in washington? [ inaudible ] >> we made it. >> this is a much easier problem than some of the really hard problems that the 20th century solved. you think about racism and sexism and homophobia. you don't just wake up one day no longer a racist. it takes years and generations

to rip that pathology out of the dna of society. but this is a problem of just changing incentives. if we change the incentives for fund-raising, campaigns would change overnight. >> sound the alarm because soon the supreme court will rule in mchutchen versus the federal election commission. the case that may open flood gates to more money and politics even wider. say to say there's barely a single decision before congress t white house or state and local governments that can't be swayed by the all mighty dollar. at our website, we'll show you

how cash has bought the vote of elected officials on every issue from environment and taxes to food stamps and the minimum wage. and on our take action page, we'll keep you updated on what to do about it. how to help spread the new hampshire rebellion to every village in town. to every precinct in this country. that's all. i'll see you there and i'll see you here next time. >> don't wait a week to get more moyerss. visit bill moyers.com for video features. >> funding is provided by,

encouraging the renewal of democracy. carniege corporation of new york. committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. the john d. and catherine t. mcarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, and peaceful world. more information at macfound.org. dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. and by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america. designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company.

>> i'm charlie roz. the program is charlie rose "the week." a new deal on the debt ceiling. a new season for house of cards. and an actor's thoughts on his craft. >> you have to be able to play straight to play funny. so if you can play straight to play nuny, playing straight is not a big thing at all. you know, lot of so-called funny people can be very good in a dramatic role. >> rose: we have those stories and more on what happened and what might happen.