let's put aside the moral cumana charity and do good side of what we believe that let's just talk it out straight reale policy so what exactly is that reality politic also terry of state hillary clinton gets 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 i'm surviving lives on the same street and we'll take you to baltimore maryland for a disturbing look at the rapid decay of the american dream. and dirty little

secrets in the nation's capital you've heard of sex trafficking and laws to crack down on it but 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 from which she should have been protected. 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 kept it out of the hands of big oil and gas companies the news starts now. i want to start today by talking about a tight rope this country seems to be walking on more and more on one side politics and power on the other principles and ideals now we live in a country that has been. scribed by many as

a shining beacon of democracy and then he followed his notion including i think it's fair to say president obama. the united states is helping to lead an international effort to defer the search for the file put in place unprecedented saying hold the gadhafi government accountable and support the aspirations of libyan people we are also responding quickly to the urgent humanitarian needs that are developing. but there's also another side this view of real politic that principle should be thank you for power and this is not a democrat versus republican issue even within his own administration there seems to be a difference in opinion here secretary of state hillary clinton earlier this week let's put aside the moral cumana ceria and do good side of what we believe in and let's just talk it out straight reale policy we are in a trap petition with china take papa would it be any huge energy find you go to one

of senator lugar's very strong points exxon mobil is producing it china is in there every day in every way and joining me now to talk more about this is ohio congressman dennis kucinich and congressman let's talk about this you have hillary clinton the secretary of state on one hand thing you know what sometimes we've got to put aside that do gooder humanitarian stuff and then you are president obama being really firm you know for example with libya we've got to help the people talk about this divide. there's another element called common sense common sense should be aligned with principle and principles are not just the principles of a nation are the principles of all humanity and the truth there has to be power for everyone of and or for and for and i wanted our so let's look at how you measure real politic the invasion of iraq was real politic it was also based on lies totally in principle the invasion of afghanistan or the rather the occupation based

on a misreading of history and ultimately in principle the attempt to use covert ops to knock out a government. some might say real politic unprincipled and all of these things that are unprincipled guess what inevitably they become self-defeating they're counterproductive so i say that while ideals are stars that we. sail by principles are also part of our navigational equipment and day to day living so the minute america starts to set aside its principles we lose our way i think it's really important to bring in countries like iraq and afghanistan but we've got a if we have this discussion we've also got to talk about china you know when we look at competition at the game of success china makes no bones about it they're not here talking about principles and so they have no problem doing business with other countries whose principles they may or may not agree with unlike the u.s. and here's where the u.s. trapped itself we passed a trade agreement with china which would have was devoid of workers' rights the

right to strike the right to collective bargaining the right to join a union a right to decent wages and benefits the right to say ford place it was devoid of prohibitions on child labor and slave labor when it was devoid of any environmental protection so we sacrificed our principles in the name of being able to trade which i don't what have we what is what has happened last millions of jobs and china is now setting the rules for commerce internationally instead of the united states taking our principles and ensuring that china would have to. not just setting the rules also in many cases dealing with this country footing the bill i want to talk about just sort of hypothetically speaking what would you think would happen if the u.s. said you know what across the board we're going to put principles aside we're going to start doing business with countries that we definitely disagree with countries for example cuba me and maher. you know in wiki leaks cables there's a u.s. official saying china is playing dirty contrast that but what if the u.s. did that what do you think would happen what we shouldn't have principles that say

that we shut ourselves out from the world we need to view the world as an interdependent interconnected and they're all humanity has a common claim to the progress and survival of the world if we proceed from that then we have trade that space and quality and then we're not trying to crush other countries or add to their dad or force them into military purchase or military equipment what we need to do is to take an approach that makes it possible for all nations to survive and we have to look at our monetary systems as well which frankly we're in the united states moving towards a predatory predatory type of capitalism which is crushing people here at home and then we're exporting it abroad i'm curious on your take on what's going on right now you know as you and i sit here in libya some different notions about how the u.s. is responding should respond how does this play into the argument of power versus principle well all over the middle east and north africa you see people rising up and challenging their governments the right of self-determination is an inherent

right but because it doesn't become self-determination or become something else that any nation intervenes on one side or the other so the fact of the matter is there are times that intervention is not called for no matter how we much we'd like to do it because if we intervene then what we're going to be doing is let's say we intervene on those who are challenging mr gadhafi then he could point to that and say this is just the united states trying to knock me off and try to create more intrenchments which would. cause at least. half of libya to be lost and you know oppression how does this end in libya i'm just wondering i mean president mubarak step down is a different situation he's making no attempt to show the world that he's going to step down those two possibilities either you know regain control you know in a bloodbath or he'll be in a bloodbath either way unfortunately going you know they're going to be a lot of people who are no question about it now you were talking just a few moments ago about people rising up and this is not just going on around the

rest of the world this is going on in our own country and in your state the state of ohio we just saw some huge protests this week especially in light of what happened in ohio on wednesday we saw the state senate passed legislation that strips collective bargaining rights from three hundred fifty thousand workers there i know this is headed to the state house the governor has said he would sign it what's your position on all of us well i'm absolutely opposed to any attempt to take away collective bargaining rights from public workers or any workers it's an inherent right of democratic society people should have the right to be able to negotiate for their wages for their working conditions and for their benefits and the minute that you take that away from people the minute you say the states you are and what i say you work under these conditions these are your benefits that changes the nature of the relationship and change is something that is profoundly anti-democratic we're seeing this going on at the state level in your state in

wisconsin i wondering though you know you're here in washington what's the discussion with you and other colleagues in terms of how this plays out in terms of you know this deficit that we're in people keep saying these these greedy union members they just want more money but we're we're too strapped right now what do you guys talking about behind closed doors it's a lot of americans excel running up towards the black hole that affected wall street wall street recovered we have a jobless recovery we have wall street making profits are going to be paying huge bonuses again. and yet we have workers whose wages are are frozen or they're falling behind what's happening is that there's a form of class warfare going on in the united states right now in the middle class is getting destroyed so members of congress have to be painfully aware of what's happening back in their districts where people are fighting to protect their jobs if they have one they're fighting to save their homes this is a time of great economic stress and frankly unless our economic system is structured become more just where people have jobs where they have health care

where they have retirement security their children can go to schools and people can protect their homes unless we can assure that our economy we are failing in our responsibility to help people enjoy this mythical american dream that the american dream is already gone how can we reclaim it and say we want to make sure everyone can survive in this economy that's not happening important question and you always fighting the good fight congressman dennis kucinich around the state of ohio well it's about a half hour from washington d.c. but in many ways it is a city that is worlds away from talking about the city of baltimore maryland starting to crumble under the weight of foreclosures layoffs and budget cuts are just kalen for takes us there and gives us a firsthand look at a clear just parity in the way people get. 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 and were here. yesterday as well for six and a half years and well notice they just gave us the actually they were about like we was just the people and that's colin or join the ranks of baltimore's unemploy it's a crowded place with eleven point four percent of the city's residents right now struggling to survive to organise to pay my bills and the souls of our you know you go to the market to see but business is booming in the inner harbor a luxury retail and dining district that the city has sunk millions at you and made its model of economic development he will be dead in the harbor as has the gold looking place but they don't know we're going to have this thing i mean people are being disrespected but like much of america where the richest twenty percent own

eighty four percent of the wealth baltimore's harbor it's a little long last line will still hold it's got a home but 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 hours wage and racial lines yes you can pay for a class thing but ironically enough most people that are pushed out by this new development happen to be black or happen to be like people from the inner harbor is baltimore's your 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 i think 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 programs in low income neighborhoods in towns. and community development block

grants that so many of our cities and states rely on the domestic spending chopping block were thirteen point nine billion dollars in cuts to food stamp program in maryland alone more than half a million residents depend on food stamps that's a thirty two percent increase from 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. took. six percent more than when obama stuck here just days before his inauguration in two thousand and nine one i believe baltimore but you made this belief very no fireworks for the people who love this dog country but residents of these blocks and blocks of abandoned houses have been able to change the spreading poverty threatening to engulf more and more of baltimore with homes being foreclosed on and

jobs during the 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 killen for a t. baltimore maryland sales certainly of the haves and have nots going to thursday once going on in baltimore is going on in cities all over this country but in baltimore it is also many ways magnified yesterday i spoke to robert johnson he's a journalism professor at the university of texas at austin i asked him why the american dream seems so contradictory these days. well i think these are issues that have long been on the table in the united states the disparities in wealth you have a relatively small relatively elite group of you know it's state citizens who control the disproportionate share of the wealth we also noted that disproportionate wealth is racialized that is on average white folks are doing better than black and brown folks the recession the economic meltdown the financial crisis the last few years

have simply be exacerbated but we're existing inequality is deeply embedded in the u.s. system because our inequalities that have endured even after the significant achievements of the civil rights movement of the one nine hundred sixty s. these racialized disparities in wealth and continue and so what we're seeing now is a kind of intensification of a profoundly unequal system. that's being magnified by the crisis yeah sort of put the magnifying glass on it all let's talk about this concept of the american dream and more specifically the contradictory nature of it you know i love this term people are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps as if anyone can do anything what's the truth in your eyes behind this dream. well in comparison to societies that are much more close the united states historically has been open open immigrants open to people different backgrounds that's certainly true many of us

can tell stories about immigrant parents or grandparents for instance who came to the united states worked hard and achieved a higher level of material comfort than they might have in their home country for instance but the reality is that most people in the united states live out their lives in the social class into which they were born the amount of mobility in the united states socially and economically maybe more or than in mortgage societies but it doesn't rise to the level that i think people believe in this kind of american dream the polity so what we're dealing with is the problem of structural inequality in an economy capitalist corporate dominated economy that's designed to produce that inequality not max and in a way the world works the merit craddick story has some validity but i think it used to mask that basic inequality and that tension again is not new although we're seeing it dramatically. i think more intense ways because of the collapse and all

of this of course is based on us down a nation of the world the american dream being rooted in the way the you know that state has disproportionately captured a share of the world well i'm going to get a little bit more detail about that i mean a very interesting to hear you say that it's actually the system is designed this way to keep the rich rich and the poor poor and keep that moving this way well this is been an observation that's been made over the centuries that capitalism is an economic system has dominated the first set of countries and then of actually the globe so we see this both within societies and on a global scale at this point i don't think it should be surprising to recognize that a system that that disproportionately accrues to some and not others. we'll continue to do so now the question about the american dream i think is not only the way that that wealth is distributed within the country but on a global scale and here i think we have to really step back and ask is the american

dream to some degree really another mirror for much of the population of the world because we know that the united states which has roughly about five percent of the world's population absorbed a tremendous amount of the world's resources somewhere between twenty five thirty percent depending on the resource well last i think the united states has been able to continually consume at that level well for the most part it's because of us foreign policy military policy that rests on the belief the united states has an inherent right to dominate the world and again there's none of this is new a term for this is imperialism and it's a term that's gone out of favor to some degree but i think the way to describe the u.s. so we're dealing in the united states with really two profound problems one is the internal distribution of wealth and one is our role in the world now that internal distribution of wealth so unequal i don't think can endure indefinitely and the united states continue to remain

a demonic hersey you cannot concentrate wealth like that and and not have the democratic underpinnings of the culture road slowly but surely on the world stage it's quite different because the united states is being challenged and challenge quite directly by rising powers not only challenge militarily but more importantly economically and in some sense culturally and so this american dream that we've hung our hat on in the united states is increasingly difficult to defend either at home or abroad pretty interesting when you talk about these kind of nice resources here in the united states we just did a story a couple days ago about one hundred seventy five dollar burger being sold in new york one thousand dollars is there and people here are buying them you know meanwhile others have supplement to. with their food stamps with trips to the local food pantry i'm wondering you know how you think you talk about the divide within the country you talk about the role of the u.s. on the world stage how do you think images like this play out to the rest of the

world well they play out in two very different ways when the rest of the world sees the united states of washington luxury goods and even with the recession they see the level of affluence some people aspire to be part of the united states it's not surprising so there's an aspirational image in some sense but around the world i think people are always are more than ever to seeing the gap between the rhetoric of the united states a land of plenty for all and the reality of an increasing concentration of wealth and i think both of those images are at work i think my gut feeling is that as the united states becomes more and more of a dysfunctional democracy more and for more and more of a kind of oligarchy exercise the rest of the world is going to reject that and those movements in places like tunisia egypt the middle east in in move ments in latin america. i think it's people start to see their alternative models for how to

organize themselves the luster of the american dream might start to tarnish in much more intense ways than an american no longer here on the streets paved with gold robert jensen professor in the school of journalism at university of texas at austin well according to some reports the trafficking of minors for prostitution is the third highest moneymaker for organized crime in the united states illegally behind gun and drug sales teenagers are often recruited at the mall in arcades concerts even falls earlier i spoke with tina fronts the founder and executive director of courtney's house and on profit that helps girls who have been victims of sex trafficking and who 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 i met a man who was fifteen years my senior who you know didn't kidnap me or for me into

anything he'd be for and to me it's like mine from my past and so i changed my tribe and then the trafficking situation started just like the grove now it is still happening here today go on firstly this is nothing new so this has been going on for fifty years here we labeled it a different name and we thought of prostitution and we saw that this is what the girls wanted in a was a choice but for fifty years on the same blocks it has always been trafficking controlled always and so would. go away the crime has got bigger numerous women take part of it we could be congressman it could be again marketers it can be business men it's men men take part of it the biggest mess is that these girls are eighteen and they choose it the average age of course prostitution is an eleven to fourteen so yes when i see girls when they're eighteen and nineteen years old but they actually were started wonder levon twelve and thirteen years old and that's the truth and that's the reality. what kind of things you know your advice to

people out there who do not make things better what needs to change when you said change is what we call trafficking anytime anyone takes their money they deeds or some other under age eighteen you actually don't have to prove it so what the real paying his parents need to be aware of and they need to educate their children on older man who they are dating because this does not just happen in d.c. happens in the masses in centerville and it happens to kids in two parent home houses as well well you know honestly how it usually happens is manipulate the child and that's it was one of the faces every worked with over twelve zero this man who was forty eight years old he stopped the twelve you wrote from off my head if you followed her to school she didn't. i know this this is what traffickers do that's what trafficker did my situation then he made his kind of the girl hey how you doing here and there once he already learned her behavior so this is what these

men do they are pedophiles and that's label them as such where they actually wait and watch the child so that very right moment to know and force them into prostitution and that's what we should be really afraid of you know we don't have enough laws and protect our children it's kind of really be willed or some a hearth in front of congress and i actually asked congress to have laws to protect children of us are already been there for action for have allowed us to put a man who travel children on the part of lives so that they are actually own this actually registered you know that doesn't happen that does not half so you're telling me you've got an eighteen year old who had 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 the list over somebody who psychologically trapped a young girl and trafficked her in breaks or in cells or every single day we put this word prostitution on it immediately we go there for the choice and then we arrest and charge the child who's twelve and thirteen for it then we do so now here

in this area go after traffickers there has been no federal case where there is a man who bought six from a child who had been put on first registry no federal case. that was seen in france founder and executive director of courtney's house. well it was meant to be a parting gift 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 on federally protected land in utah an area of wilderness described as pristine and beautiful well enter into the auction better number seventy twenty seven year old economics student at the university of utah he's been on several parcels of land more than twenty two thousand acres that the cost of nearly two million dollars it was money he didn't have and now he's been convicted on two felony counts for disrupting a government auction and could face ten years behind bars earlier i spoke to that

man better number seventy his real name is tim de christopher and i asked why he was willing to go through all this trouble to protect the land. was well aware of the auction and there were a lot of concerns about a look at our use of the auction so the fact that the public is locked out of the decision making process for public lands and just the threat of climate change those associated with this bill now being played are going tolerably was so clearly part of this auction. so i was i was aware of that one had to do something to stand in the way of this auction and also to delete the long enough for the new administration come in and. return the option which ended up happening. and they had already indicated their their purpose to get it out in your times it's time yeah yeah i wanted 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 the

land back it seems to me a tim you've gotten quite a following over the course of this last year i want to play really quick a scene from outside the courthouse out after the verdict was announced yesterday. we don't know if you go to prison we know just know that's the reality that's just a job that i have to. swallow. and many before me is gone to jail for justice and if we're going to keep our position then after what happened join me as well. then some even calling you the nelson mandela of the environmental movement your reaction to the verdict and also to this wave of support people saying they join you in jail. well the verdict was there is the cries of. how limited archetypes was we actually were able to tell the truth from those overturned anyway we weren't able to tell the truth that the government admitted

they weren't following their own rules. we want people to tell them that i. am an operative for the p.l.o. . and they refused to accept. the way to raise this money when you were able to raise it through fundraisers so you actually were able to offer that money for the land yes within about two weeks of the auction we are part of the. initial payment that they said was due. but they refused to take it on the grounds that i was in the global bitter. 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 will actually happen or what do you think the sentence will be and whenever 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 that. to spending a little 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 to jail 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 to some degree get comfortable or and and that's just the role that i have placed before me no i was eco activists came to christopher and that is going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to our t. dot com flash usa also check out our you tube page you tube got tom flash our t. america want to thank you so much for watching hope you have a great weekend and christine for that.