let's put aside the more old humanitarian do good side of what we believe in and let's just talk it out straight reality politics so what exactly is that rail politic all secretary of state hillary clinton get direct with us foreign policies president obama may not share her notion of reality we'll examine the white house divide when it comes to power versus principle. and the divide between the haves and have nots in america continues to grow but in one u.s. city that's advice lives on the same street we'll take you to baltimore maryland for a disturbing look at the rapid decay of the american dream. dirty little secrets in

the nation's capital you've heard of sex trafficking and laws to crackdown on it have you heard that it happens just steps away from where those laws are made we'll talk to one woman who broke away from a lifestyle which she should have been protecting. and how far would you go to stick up for your beliefs one environmentalist is going to jail for his hear how his high bid for government owned land keeps it out of the hands of big oil and gas companies. it's friday march fourth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for is out there watching our team. well i want to start today by talking about a tightrope this country seems to be walking on more and more on one side politics then power on the other side principles and ideals we live in

a country that has been described by some as a shining beacon of democracy and then we follow this notion including i think it's fair to say president obama the united states is helping to lead an international effort to defer deter further violence put in place unprecedented same old flossy government accountable and support the aspirations of the libyan people we are also responding quickly to the urgent humanitarian needs that are both. then there's this other side this view of rail politic but principles should be sacrificed for power and this is not a democrat versus republican issue even within his own administration there seems to be a difference of opinion here secretary of state hillary clinton earlier this week let's put aside the moral humanitarian do good side of what we believe in and let's just talk it out straight reality we are in

a competition with china take popple in a guinea huge energy find to go to one of senator lugar's very strong points exxon mobil is producing it china is in there every day in every way earlier i spoke to investigative journalist and r.t. contributor wayne madsen he gave me his thoughts on whether clinton or obama has the dominant school of thought. i think secretary of state clinton's probably the one who is really advancing the real us agenda and hear her talk about real politic reminds me of henry kissinger and this is what is a century kissinger and i can't suit come back to life here but. it's interesting she talked about papua new guinea. we have supported regime into regime in indonesia and they have half of that island new guinea under their control. which has an independence movement freeport murrin us mining company talk about exxon

mobil is an interesting lolo soetoro who was president obama's stepfather went to work for exxon after he worked for the suharto regime that of course overthrew president sukarno and there was a terrible bloodbath that followed i think it's fine that president obama says these things but look at the reality of his administration's politics and we see backing for a lot of regimes around the world we've installed this kind of schizophrenia over egypt where frank wisner was sent over there by all these people were saying nice things about mubarak and of course mubarak was gone. and the rhetoric doesn't match our policies toward the regime in yemen for example which is a u.s. close u.s. military ally and what we can talk to have this discussion without also bringing into the equation that china certainly when it comes to success on a global scale china doesn't pretend to be guided by you know principles and i

think coming more and more clear that they're making good business decisions by doing that do you think i mean i got to what extent do you think it's working for china and comparison to what's happening here our country that's vastly and that well i think it depends on whether the united states wants to be more driven by the interests of wall street over the. of what we claim to be a beacon of democracy around the world you look everywhere in the world you look at some of these countries in africa where we're supporting basically dictators because of economics uganda for example most seventy there's oil natural gas finds there we back the dictator a wonder for the same reason. so you see the united states trying to be like china in many respects and i think that's that's a wrong thing to do at the same time when we're not doing business as with countries like cuba and me and are these are countries that are certainly have you

know agendas that the u.s. openly disagrees with what happens if the u.s. does this trying to put those ideals aside and say you know what if the pro-business we're going to open up trade again here's a problem with you when you have local. pressure groups in the united states we should have economic ties to cuba there's a lot of republican governors from farm states that would really go for that but the minority vocal minority in southern florida now we have ileana ross lehtinen who's the chairman of the house foreign relations committee who was basically their person. there will be no contact with cuba that we have really just the joint in foreign policy it seems like the administration is more of a committee where everybody gets an equal vote and it's basically pandemonium if you're another government around and you know in a world you're looking at what is the u.s. foreign policy we have the schizophrenia play out with the demonstrations against

mubarak now we have like a split on how we handle kadafi in libya and that was our view contributor and investigative journalist from. well it's just not a half hour drive from here in d.c. but in many ways it is the thirty that is world apart i'm talking about the city of baltimore maryland starting to crumble under the weight of foreclosures layoffs and budgets. kalen for takes us there and gives us a firsthand look at a clear disparity in the way people live. every day leonard gray used to leave this house in west baltimore to come here a job a living and a piece of baltimore's million dollar harbor revival until one day he and the other one hundred sixty employees of disney's e.s.p.n. zone were told they had been laid off effective immediately we're here we're.

going to have. these. people and that colin are joining the ranks of baltimore's unemploy it's a crowded place with eleven point four percent of the city's residents right now struggling for survival. you know you go through the more. but business is booming in the inner harbor a luxury retail in dining district that the city has sunk millions of q. and made its model of economic development. but they don't know what. i mean people are. like much of america where the richest twenty percent own eighty four percent of the well all tomorrow's harbor is split along class lines. the workers who work in these restaurants can't even eat what they're cooking because they charge the same price seven dollars for a hamburger and ours wage and racial line yes you can say it's

a class thing but ironically enough most of the people that are pushed out by this new development happen to be black or happen to be like the inner harbor is baltimore's jewel its model of economic development generating hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue a year but just a few blocks east or west the reality is much different a city crumbling under the weight of foreclosures and crushing economic crisis it was against this backdrop that president obama announced one point one trillion dollars in cuts to the budget will mean cutting things that i care deeply about. for example community action for rooms of low income neighborhoods and towns. and community development block grants that so many of our cities and states with water on the domestic spending chopping block with thirteen point nine billion dollars in cuts to food stamp programs in maryland alone more than half a million residents depend on food stamps that's

a thirty two percent increase since two thousand and eight. and that means more hardship for a place like baltimore where a staggering twenty percent of residents live below the poverty line. to some. six percent more than when obama starts here just days before his inauguration in two thousand and nine this is what i believe baltimore but you. best believe. the platforms for the people who love this country can change but residents in these blocks and blocks of abandoned row houses haven't been able to change the spreading poverty threatening to engulf more and more of baltimore with homes being foreclosed on and jobs green area in many ways west baltimore is a microcosm of the rest of the united states and when schools like these are closed little hope remains in this neighborhood for what the future might look like for

the r.t. baltimore maryland well a tale of thoroughly on behalf of the have nots and it's hard to say that what's going on in baltimore is going on in cities all over the country but in baltimore and also in many ways magnified earlier i spoke to you one way stuff writer for the washington post she told me income income inequality inequality is inevitable in a free society but what's concerning is how big a big gap really is between the rich and poor. right now you're seeing something like the top ten percent of households taking home fifty percent of the nation's wealth and so the question becomes what are the social occasions of that in terms of does that breed unrest does that breed zaya the among other income levels and then also what are the economic implications of that does such a large amount of wealth being concentrated among the top tiers american households does that stimulate economic growth that trickle down to other economic classes so

the what we're really grappling with is not asleep the fact is income inequality but the magnitude of income income inequality i think that's an important point and i have you i want to kind of pick your brain on something that you know a little more about that a lot of people and that is food prices and i know that some interesting information i think just out today is that a new record with that at least for as long as the the un food and agriculture organization has been keeping tabs on this and that is the food price index went to two hundred thirty six points last month and that was an increase of two point two percent from january a record let's bring the price of food and kind of relate it to this income inequality discussion so one one thing to consider we talk about rising food prices and also rising commodity prices in general not just food but energy costs gasoline and cetera is that you know lower income households spend a large proportion of their income on food on these days and subsidies and that

leaves them less money to spend on discretionary items which is one thing that actually helps drive the economy and also reduces the amount of product that they can actually buy in fact in january in the u.s. we found was that even though we we received a payroll tax cut you know all workers receive a two percent benefit to their paychecks that money was actually eaten up by inflation by rising food costs are rising gas prices so that some things that are going to check or look the patriot. little better doesn't go quite as far exactly and so that's something that is really important to think about when you look at ways to stimulate the economy in particular ways to help the most vulnerable consumers. you know i've got to bring this up because it was just kind of shocking to me a few days ago here in r.t. we did a story about some of the luck to pull items in new york i'm talking about one hundred seventy five dollars burger it's. you know kobe beef and. i'm in there is something like. this is on sale at

a cafe on wall street surprisingly ten thousand dollars martinis are popping up one thousand dollars one thousand dollars desserts do you think that we're going to continue to see more and more things like this things that only the wealthiest wealthiest people in the world can afford you know as more and more people are using food stamps and going to the food pantry is i think the one thing that's interesting about the income gap in america is that it's really driven by tremendous teams at the top of the spectrum so it's not necessarily that the lower income people are making less money but that the richest are getting phenomenally richer than the rest of us and that was the line we stuff writer for the washington post. well it's a horrific crime and it happens in many countries around the world talking about sex trafficking and there are in fact various reports put out with facts and figures and how many evil world leaders allow it to happen on their soil but it turns on it turns out it's going on right here in this country and the numbers and

the stories are shocking correspondent i wanted to as the story. the u.s. state department regularly puts out reports on how horrific human trafficking is in other countries but right under the government's very nose in washington dozens of girls and boys are sold. just walks away from capitol hill where on the street that's known as the heart for lobbyists and lawyers in washington that's by day i night this is where spores of prostitutes walk to get picked up and children average age thirteen are also being trafficked here to washington and seoul asia was one of them as a teenager she was lured into prostitution by a man who she thought was the love of her life working in sex trade fifteen hours a day she gave him all she earned over a thousand dollars a day it was just like gropes for catherine and myself like as separate. like i was another place when i had. it like it was in me the f.b.i.

estimates that each year more than one hundred thousand underage american girls are exploited for commercial sex in the united states but the usual trick when the children get when arrested is either jail time or probation like a. criminal record in the u.s. prostitution laws do not exempt minors from prosecution the office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention reported one thousand and six hundred juveniles were arrested for prostitution within just one year but lawyer saying the u.s. the paradox of the system is that the children are prosecuted for crimes for which they cannot legally give consent the hold up we we say that this child is a victim and yet we sent her to jail somewhere along the line there's something wrong with that and we need to be taken a look at ourselves and a look at the fact that we have we have made the tension and we have made law enforcement in the criminal justice system in the juvenile justice system a default setting for what happens to these kids and that we just kind of lock them

up and ship them away and that's the end of our response to. this issue is we want to make sure that these children are treated as victims of put treating the victims and providing for their recovery requires funding unfortunately there isn't federal money for us with some such applicant that tina front works with a nonprofit group in washington which helps the children to get their lives back providing housing and medical treatment she herself was trafficked at the age of thirteen tina says it's easier for the government to label the children as prostitutes charge them and send them to do kenshin centers rather than fund shelters and invest in their future there's not enough housing for sex trafficking victims at our around the country there's one hundred thousand and eighty beds which includes mine that sit in the us and so what they're saying is so for their safety we will arrest them and put them in jail. so the cases further states but they don't get any services and we charge the victim and we don't put great

think thompson jail so why would we put our traffic and almost all of the victims of child trafficking remember being constantly great and abused both spike payments and clients and many of the young people that we serve have been incarcerated and charged as an adult under the age of sixteen and so they have this lengthy fifteen twenty thirty forty arrests both as a juvenile and as an adult for persecution and so when they go to apply for public housing and eligible for that when they go to certain employment that pops up in their background check and you know kind of booted out of an employment training program these children is already scarred as it is that the nonprofit organizations that help victims of sex trafficking say by prosecuting the children by not investing in their recovery it is the government that is their future i'm going to check out reporting from washington r.t. . well according to some reports trafficking minors for prostitution third highest

moneymaker for tonight's crime in the united states this country falling only behind a gun and drug sales teenagers are often recruited an arcade that the mall concerts even schools earlier i spoke with tina front the founder and executive director of courtney's house a nonprofit that helps girls who have been victims of sex trafficking and she was also a victim herself here's her story. you know unfortunately my story is very similar to what we hear today when i was thirteen a man was fifteen years my senior who you know didn't kidnap me or throw me into anything he friended me it's a month some months and gains my trust and been the trafficking situation started just like the girls and they are still happening here today well unfortunately this is nothing new so this is been going on for fifty years here we labeled it a different name and we thought of prostitution and we said hey this is what the girls want to and it was a choice but for fifty years on the same block it has always been trafficking

controlled always and so with that said go away climb to. numerous men take part of it could be congressman it could be again marketers it can be businessman it's men men take part of that because there is you know these girls are eighteen and they choose it the african asian forced prostitution is eleven to fourteen so yes we may see girls when they're eighteen and nineteen years old but they actually were started when they're eleven twelve and thirteen years old and that's for sure and that's the reality of it what kind of things you know your advice to people out there who do not make things better what needs to change when these are changes what we call trafficking any time anyone takes that money course their mother under age eighteen rashmi don't have to prove it so what the role playing is parents need to be aware and they need to educate their children on the

older man who they are dating because this does that just happen in d.c. happens in the masses in center and it happens to kids in two parent home houses as well oh you know honestly how it usually happens is a part of manipulates a child and that's it was one of the cases that we were working a lot with the twelve year old this man who was forty eight years old he stopped the twelve year old firm are from having followed her to school she did. i know this this is what traffickers do best with a trafficker did my situation then he made his kind of available oh hey how you doing here in there once you've already learned her behavior so this is what these do they are pedophiles and let's label them as such where they actually wait and watch the child for that very moment to know and force them into what's attention and that's what we should be really afraid of you know we don't have enough loss to protect our children it's kind of really the world is to me how i sit in front of congress and i actually asked congress to have laws to protect children that are

already there so i asked them to have laws to put a man who traffic children on a part of a list so that they are actually on the such registers you know that doesn't happen that does not have so you're telling me that an eighteen year old who has sex with his sixteen year old girlfriend who can sense but then changes her mind and gets him put on the list is put on a list over somebody who psychologically tracked a young girl and trafficked her in cells her every single day we put this where prostitution immediately we go there's the there was a choice and then we arrest and charge the child who's twelve and thirteen for it then we do now here in this area go after the traffickers there has been no federal case where there is a man who bought six from a child who has been put on the sex registry the federal case and now if you know front founder and executive director of courtney's house. well it was meant to be a parting gifts from president george w.

bush to the oil and gas industry in the final weeks of his presidency the bureau of land management held an auction to sell the rights to drill for oil and gas and federally protected lane and utah an area of wilderness described as pristine and beautiful and during the auction bitter number seventy a twenty seven year old economics student at the university of utah he bid on several cars. of land more than twenty two thousand acres at the cost of nearly two million dollars it was money he didn't have and he's now been convicted on two felony counts for disrupting a government auction and could face ten years behind bars earlier i spoke to that man bitter bitter number seventy whose real name is tim de christopher i asked him why he was willing to go through all this trouble to protect the land. well it was well aware of the auction ahead of there were a lot of concerns about the legality of the auction so the fact that the public has been locked out of the decision making process of public lands and just the threat

of climate change is look this will now be greater khalidi was so clearly a part of this auction. so i was i was aware of it wanted to do something to just you know the way of this auction and also to learn he'd been long enough that the administration. simply overturned the option which. they already indicated their first to do that you know there are times yeah yeah i want to make sure our viewers know know that you know in doing this you did indeed prolong the process the obama administration has since taken this land back seems to me tim you've gotten quite a following over the course of this last year i want to play a really quick scene from outside the courthouse out after the verdict was announced yesterday. and we all know if you go to prison we know to know that you know that's just a job that's true. but he was like. many before me gone to jail for justice

but if we're going to keep our kids in the fish you have to join me as well. ten some even calling you the nelson mandela of the environmental movement your reaction to the verdict and also to this wave of support people paying big join you in jail. well the verdict itself wasn't very surprising. how limited our defense was we actually were able to tell the jury that the auction was overturned anyway we learned with time of the jury that the government admitted they were following their own rules. we weren't able to tell them that i did raise the initial payment and offered it to the island and they refused to accept that payment. so we always made money when you were able to raise it for fundraisers so you actually were able to offer that money for the land yes within about two weeks

of the auction we operate the. initial payment that they said was due. but they refused to take it on the grounds that i was in a normal bitter. our defense team was only allowed to talk about what happened on that day of the auction on december nineteenth two thousand and eight we learn or allowed to talk about the illegitimacy to the effect not the auction that occurred before that we weren't allowed to talk about actions that i took after that or that the government took after that. all we're allowed to talk about was that specific day when this auction happened. you know initially we did want to use what's called the necessity defense which is the argument i was as you know necessity to prevent greater harm which i certainly saw that if this auction was delayed and i was totally wrong it was a small boy and it would have redone things. but if it were true would have been

allowed to go forward it would have created irreparable damage i'm wondering i you know i know that you were given the option of a reduced sentence if you pleaded guilty to one of the charges but you refused i guess talk to me about why you decided not to plead guilty. well i think that a jury is a really important part of our legal system in this country and and even though the jury wasn't allowed to hear what was the information. even so even though that the jury was told that they weren't allowed to question the lifting of the decision i still thought it was important that attorney. serve some sort of role in this process i think it was it was really important that. we have that reminder that jurors are supposed to be the conscience of the community and and they serve an important part of the legal process well i see an absence of justice i don't know how much that particularly bothers me or surprises me. i think it's simply the

rules that we play. and then i think i think we need to acknowledge that our opponents in the struggle for helping us world are those who are in power today the corporate power structures around our country and. and we should realize that if we're going to work for a healthy and just world we're up against the forces that control the country and so we're going to suffer consequences for that. and those that are on their side of increasing that corporate power are not going to suffer consequences the hands of the very government that they control but i'm wondering you know i mean you face up to ten years behind bars i guess i'm wondering do you think that that will actually happen or what do you think the sentence will be and whatever it is i mean do you think that you're going to be able to do good behind bars as opposed to being out. i think the did it will serve some good. for me to serve my time i think it's

something that is the next step for the climate movement in this country we need to realize. spending a livable future will be legitimate sacrifices that we will actually have to pay some real consequences for us and then we will probably have to go dear you know every successful social movement has had people go to jail some of them for extended periods. and i think that's something that we need to some degree get comfortable. and that's just the role that i have placed before me now that was ego activist him to christopher and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to our team dot com slash usa we've also got a great you tube page and youtube dot com flashcards the america and christine for that will be back here in an hour and a half.