it's the grand imperial. george was to school until you can the essential tools with which its ability to go and clear from the sun the colonel was such as this to retreat. and we have a top here it is mitt romney rick perry michele bachmann ok but why the iowa straw poll thirdly didn't tell you that aren't we missing a certain someone here so what's with the mainstream media ignoring. that you most people are one or two paychecks away from losing their housing. so what happens that dozens of middle class americans and how are you out on their asphalt we'll take you to a place where the american dream has faded into the sunset right alongside million dollars yachts. and coming to america we asked on the streets and search looks like me we may have

a little bit of london right in the good ole us of a. it's tuesday august sixteenth pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching our team. you know as well i am back from ames iowa where i covered last week's g.o.p. debate as well as the iowa straw poll to spend some quality time in middle america and i also got a front row seat to some of the early campaigning that's going on for the republican primary and i've got to make some observations about what it looks like on the ground there especially when it comes to a certain candidate the night of the debate standing on a bridge overlooking the road where the candidates in the media come in a group a large group of ron paul supporters i ran into a couple college kids who said they had very little money for drove in from

missouri to show their support and also going to family who drove from vegas for the same reason ron paul and if you want to debate and heard the cheers in the audience you don't understand he has a following and many of them were pleasant personally surprised to see that ron paul was asked a lot of questions by the mediators of the fox sponsored debate so i thought ok you know maybe the means to mainstream media is going to give him a fair shot even try to talk to ron paul about that afterwards. looks like they paid more attention to you this time around or move it my way. all right so ron paul was not convinced but i'm going to say the most astounding thing i saw was apple straw poll itself this is the way it works each of the candidates have you know their campaign bus and maybe a tent and the stage ron paul had an entire wing of iowa state university games and stages and multiple tents yes the ron paul can't spent more money on you can see i took some of these pictures that used that you're seeing behind me these are

people who were decked out in ron paul gear on you know and they needed the space that ron paul rented they had a bus load of supporters and tons of people and they showed up and they voted out of the sixteen thousand eight hundred ninety two vote cast ron paul came in that into place losing to michele bachmann by a hundred fifty thousand but that is less than one percent let's take a listen to how mainstream media interpreter interpreted this quote based on what we know today the republican nominee for president is almost certainly going to be one of the three candidates michele bachmann rick perry or mitt romney we have a talk here it is mitt romney rick perry michele bachmann guess what if you get video surveillance or get a soundbite from her brain get back to us you can hold the ron paul stuff. i have gotten a ton of e-mail today from people saying look ron paul finished one hundred fifty two votes and michele bachmann of the instructor basically

a dead heat why are we giving him his due oh well let me start with the second question because it's easier to remember who is the latest one ron paul is not going to be playing there you know it sticks with the carrot is not going to be elected where you're going with the country. so what is the deal here i mean the people are voting ron paul's views on everything from gold to ending the wars to closing down lower federal reserve are starting to be adopted by more mainstream republicans his ideas have remained consistent and yet he is still according to most people and a lot of them well luckily the ron paul camp is still full speed ahead so i want to leave you with this a snippet of ron paul's latest campaign at. liberty . to. restore america.

no matter who the presidential nominee is the one thing he or she will be forced to talk about is a plan for jobs and the economy this is issue number one for so many americans many of whom have seen everything they've worked for slip away with economic disparity spreading across the country and this is not just the poor who are losing their jobs their homes this is also people who were once members of the middle class in some cases joblessness and ability to pay rent has forced people to live in their cars or shelters or even on the sidewalk our kids were among the window gives us a firsthand look at how this is impacting people in several cities in the golden state california. many americans who wind up living on the streets never thought their economic prosperity would eventually become economic ruin for move here. to.

find your friend kevin payton describes his financial stability when he was working as an electrician in louisiana after being laid off so he headed west to san diego in search for work but payne has been able to land a job in this expensive city and within months ended up on the street begging for change they say in a mobile call if i want to mean i do have an office love you but the cinema will qualify. that on the stand it's just pain is not alone when it comes to formerly middle class americans and able to find work and ending up on the street i used to be there since it's. become a little hospital and elderly out of shame nina doesn't want to show her face on camera she saw embarrassed about her financial situation she hasn't come clean to her relatives about how bad things have gotten she now sleeps on a mattress on the street corner it's

a rough life made even tougher as police and force measures to push homeless people out of certain neighborhoods while there are signs for a vacant luxury condos right next door you can see the belongings of hundreds and thousands of homeless people who will not have a bed to sleep in tonight there are people all over the city in cars with more people finding high rents or mortgage payments impossible to pay sleeping in a car or motor home has become a widespread last resort they saw i mean not just leap in. inside my car i model it what i will call to kill angel who is also ashamed to show his face has been threatened by police for living in his pickup truck in venice california others have been arrested or ticketed for doing just that and we live in a city where people are one paycheck away from being homeless who can go down on skid row that's what you see people lost an apartment they wound up there and it

becomes a cycle you can't get out of those trying to help the homeless sometimes are targeted by police as well this video shows activists being arrested for handing out food to transients in orlando florida one of several american cities where feeding the homeless is outlawed. most people are one or two paychecks away from losing now housing and that's just the truth nationwide the official unemployment rate is doggedly stuck at over nine percent many economists however claim the real figure is twice that with many no longer bothering to look for jobs a record forty five million people are now on food stamps but food pantry struggle to keep up with demand and if it weren't for the services who knows how many people might be on the streets. what i would make them richer richer it was more and more as the government struggles to get its own financial house in order

little thought seems to be given to the housing of americans all across the country leading many to wonder if scenes like these might be the new normal for america in los angeles ramon glinda party. well as you ponder nonsupport many of these people are literally living alongside the docks of where some of the wealthier residents keep their boats and their yachts so i want to talk about that this aspect of the growing gap between the rich and poor richard as cows a senior fellow with the campaign for america's future and is in our l.a. studio richard i want to talk to you about this because i know that you've written quite a bit about income inequality we just heard in this report the rich getting richer the poor getting poorer how much does this gap between the rich and for play a role in where we are today economically as a society well an enormous role and an increasing role i think what we've

seen over the last twenty to thirty years has been an enormous outward distribution of wealth not only to the top ten percent but to the top one percent and not only to the top one percent but the top point one percent and on and on and on so we have this enormous interest period of wealth where. huge amounts of money are controlled by the few and relatively small amounts by the many historically this has always been are the precursor of enormous instability of one kind or another but we are recklessly pursuing policies that will perpetuate the problem and make it even worse when it's the way it's looking right now so what do you think are some of the those policies on that really stand out that we should be aware of. well right now we're seeing a situation where after ten years of tax policies that enormously benefit the wealthiest among us we have a situation where one political party is saying we will not raise taxes on these

wealthy people no matter what and the other political party is saying gosh we want to work with you guys so what can we do so the president said yesterday for example that he was disappointed because the republican candidates for president indicated that they wouldn't accept a spending agreement that involved one increase in in tax dollars for a ten dollars in cuts and he thought that his comment on that was they don't seem willing to compromise well if we're moving toward a country as we appear to be where you have to cut nine dollars in services to the middle class and lower income americans in order to perhaps request a tax increase on for the wealthiest of us we're going to see an enormous sturrock lehi imbalance and inequality of income get even worse and that's a very unstable situation never a why would anyone change if what they're doing is working out for them i want to

point out something that you wrote today that sticks out for me in terms of a comparison that you made between the u.s. and egypt egypt being thought of by most americans as being a corrupt country where you write that ritz executives can break the law without being punished increasing poverty and hardship even as the stock market rises and now a nascent caught between a broken political system and a populist movement that could be hijacked by religious extremists at any moment and young post say that income inequality is actually greater here in the united states the top a little bit on the comparison and answer me this why are americans then not on the streets protesting as we saw in egypt. well first of all obviously egypt is a poorer country to begin with so poor people in egypt are really struggling to survive and that's one reason but it's not the only reason people do reject inequality eventually and recoil at it in terms of why aren't americans out in the

street you know it's a complicated question but people in great britain or out in the street until a couple weeks ago either so i think what you see often historically is a boiling point you know what we're seeing is a country our country that refuses to realize recognize the signs of impending trouble you know they the impose austerity economics in europe and those economies stagnate riots break out across europe they oppose austerity economics in great britain that economy goes into the tank and riots break out there and what are we talking about in this country how much more austerity economics we're going to impose here and so i think you've got a mad situation where people aren't watching the danger signs and in fact even though they're headed toward a brick wall they seem determined to press down on the accelerator maybe for the short term economic gains or political gains i don't really know but i think you know i think there are warning signs all around us you know when we talk about this

gap between rich and poor i always think it's interesting to look at the economy where the people making the laws live now i'm talking of course about right live here in washington d.c. where it's far more difficult to feel the effects of the economic downturn when so many here do have the majority of course working for the u.s. government but i want to put up the most recent gallup poll this is one about economic confidence in this country washington d.c. not only on the top but only with this the only place with a positive or on the economic comp confidence index and that's to most confidence states north dakota and nebraska with negative thirteen and negative sixteen points respectively i guess i want to get your interpretation of the story behind these numbers. well marching to the sea is the economic ideal of the rest of the country should be a lot of people there are working a lot of people there have government jobs which means they have retirement benefits they have a secure income they have the right not to be arbitrarily fired and on and on and

on so washington d.c. it is a little mini country that is the country the united states used to be in it's days of greatest prosperity and ought to be again so naturally they're feeling good about themselves a washington d.c. economy is being infused with national security money and other kinds of government money contractors are doing great in the military and security areas the government jobs are are still there so believe me i don't want this to turn into a diatribe against government because i think government is a great participant in society so that's not what we're saying at all i think what i'm really saying is that washington d.c. is benefiting from government's proper role and making sure we have a healthy economy but once you get outside the beltway those benefits disappear and that's where the rage and frustration and despair is coming from all across the country certainly interesting i just got back from iowa last night and it's very interesting to see such a difference in the way people live in the midwest of this country and then coming

back to d.c. richard as senior fellow with campaign for america's future thanks so much for weighing in today thanks christi and we started tune in to our newscast in the next half hour coming up new at five. the wheels on obama's bus are going round and round so as he rolls into the midwestern towns through americans have any hope for a jump start on jobs well we'll talk to one unemployed american and an advocate for the ninety nine er's who says the jobs crisis can be fixed not just not recurrent climate in washington. and so i had this half hour on r t the economics thinking feeling it can be felt across the pond as well so as the e.u. is in search of a lifeboat from london cleans up its tender box could the economic on rust russia shore the u.s. well it may already happened.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so poorly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else hears you some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you know i'm sorry is a big issue. and

while it appears the tea party influence maybe crossing the ocean into europe today two prominent players in the eurozone french president nicolas sarkozy and german and german chancellor i'm going to angela merkel proposed that all seventeen countries that make up the euro zone ought to enshrined in their constitutions and obligation to balance their national budget we've heard that before all right now

that may be where the tea party influence and since they also want to harmonize national policies they're on everything from economic forecasts to corporate taxes but it seems like countries like germany which seem to lead the way in the recovery following the two thousand a collapse are getting desperate and so too are the supporters of the eurozone itself as artie's arena goes got reports. some work to live others lives to work corky market combines the two today he and his nephew ran the picture framing shops and up by hawking grandfather almost a century ago but the family firm is in a rough spot. and i don't like all in spain my business has been struggling but it was not visible in all areas of business times had been very hard for you consider this unemployment at more than twenty percent one of the highest in the eurozone it again should sovereign debt ever cross their bonds and the country's problems don't stop there despite being the fourth largest economy in europe spain is definitely

feeling the bite of the credit crisis and that led many us to question is the eurozone such a great idea after all the answer may just be no the country's rating has been downgraded twice in september of last year with moody's agency threatening to do so again in the future in fact some in spain believe the best strategy in the current climate may be an exit one knows nothing about that this would give us a certain autonomy it would affect positively internal processes in the country the purchasing power will give citizens access to all sorts of benefits and would have been good for the wages it very well could lead to the improvement of situation in spain. a key factor here is distance while the spanish struggle with debt and unemployment fate is largely being decided by groups the masters in chief in brussels. i'll not agree with what we're witnessing here in china the problems

which you cannot solve out of brussels because it's outside of the e.u. competence here tonight at the finances nor the labor capabilities to help of course many people are unhappy with the place and you have been using it to me but him isn't losing hope that his country and his business will eventually climb out of the slump. of course it will stabilize in the end it's the small businesses like mine that will do the job because three or four people take work close to heart in large corporations something which me only possible if spain quits the pondering federation of the eurozone and puts its own house back in order we can recall a score two hundred. and whether or not you agree with the idea of the euro zone one thing is clear the distressed economy across europe is having a direct impact on chaos and violence in the streets of many european cities we have course been watching london over the fast past few weeks where we've seen cars

and buildings burned and also people taking to the streets and even social networks and websites temporarily shut down so to what extent will this disorder spread it's a question more harshness with the rather resident dot net asked people in the center of new york city times square and here's what they had to say. if your neighborhood next week let's talk about that because it is very different because we aren't much interested in what's happening in our. private. the public it's. inhumane barbaric and i think unfortunately around the country. we have situations where people are disappointed with leadership in various parts of the world and they're rising up in trying to do something about it and whether you're in the middle east in europe you know fortunately we haven't had that type

of unrest here in the states but i could totally see it happening i think because in taiwan most people have very. fine lives so they don't want to have this kind of things happen but if they were angry enough at what was going on do you think that would push them to the limit. yes yes sometimes like at the election time if you are going crazy but not to this cause like the looting is so horrible and that's right but there were demonstrations in croatia but they were peaceful they would burn the flag or you know but they wouldn't break given the infield from the story so why are these british people doing that right now i think it's always you know some people started a political reason then that people around the break and still you know that that's what happens you know in the old days people but when they came on hard times just worked a bit harder tried a bit harder and you know sort of it's a hard look to set up a hard look whereas now everybody expects everything behind them on the plate you

know so if you go back in history and look at the eight hundred for example you'll see many of the same comments in the newspapers published in that era so it's the stream of history running the same course. so what can we do to change that if anything. not a damn thing whether or not you think building can happen in your city the bottom line is the rise of social media and the growing disparity between social classes could be a recipe for violence anywhere. it was a thing of war equals a rise of social media and a growing disparity of social classes and this is a good thing to point out when considering whether or not it could happen in our neighborhoods so joining me. from new york is poet lyricist and philosopher phil ross perot hey fellow you know this is. interesting thing to talk about whether or not the protest in london could actually come here talk to me about what you've

been observing as you've watched these protests take place and also have you as you've watched sort of the political craziness transpire here in washington and around the country well i mean you have a lot of cognitive dissonance i mean i was listening to your last report it seems to me that most americans have internalized the propaganda that consumerism pummels implies and. so we internalize this system we can't do anything different i mean a number of people we're speaking about worldwide are people break windows and steal consumer goods i mean the caller in britain and elsewhere who have been pummeled with this propaganda what do you expect them to do go out and loot a good job and good education. if only it were that easy i want to point something out interesting that i saw too that in england i think there are twenty one and twenty two years old they were just sentenced to four years in jail these guys you

know they set up a facebook page and encourage people to come out and protest and riot they did have meant to inciting disorder but their websites were quickly shut down but because there was some chaos and the threat of violence loomed these kids will basically spend the rest of their early twenty's in jail i think this is pretty harsh for a country that is considered civilized and believes in rights for its citizens. well. i mean the unspeakable of capitalism is it's a free floating car crime scene and the job of the police is to protect the upscale criminals it's not surprising and you know one of the things that don't happen in the u.k. uprisings is the poor rose up and well one thing about neoliberal capitalism in particular is to keep wages down you have to have a lot of unemployed people to compete against each other so you know the message here that they're sending is well you might be unemployed you might have no future

but you gam well better behave yourself yeah but to what extent does it actually benefit these you know as you call them like upscale corporate criminals what is the for the benefit them to have so many poor people in the streets you're going to have a time if more people continue to lose their homes and their jobs where you know these wealthy businessmen are going to have to step over homeless people on the streets i mean there is a relationship between the poor and the rich whether they they want therapy or not . well only the rich i mean i doubt they'll be stepping over the ridge on the streets or be on their helicopters taking off with the tops of buildings and wall street in town manhattan and trying to go string jets first to drop off their booty and off scum offshore accounts and then i have to buy for that we can't search and never touch ground so that the leaders classes in this country don't touch the ground and you know just because there are a leaders does that mean they're smart i mean eventually these dissipated dried up

dreams of the poor and you see these conference happen and it's happened throughout history is eventually dried up dreams of the poor catch fire in cities burn so are you saying this is can be you know when we when we see the hit on highly paid politicians here in washington they get up on their stump and say we need more small businesses to create jobs low and middle income jobs these politicians who are campaigns are funded by some of the wealthiest corporations in america you think that there is not being sincere at all when they say you know we want more jobs for for you know the middle and lower classes. well i know as much as it's strange credulity that politicians might not tell the truth yes of course they are they say this because they have to be elected but as you pointed out there came pain dollars they have a whole different constituency than small business owners or the laboring and

middle classes they serve the agenda of their constituency which is giant corporations that are in a relationship with with government and these major media outlets there are legal tacit agreements that try to protect the status quo when the going status quo at this time is corporate neo liberalism spread across the globe so we're going to say that real quick yes or no question fell you think that the mobs in the protests could and up on the streets of the us well you know the and united states is a sort of a different place i mean you know we have no history anymore from social engagement there is no public square as the rails elsewhere we have the equivalent of a waddling around the nor leaving a great big cinema boners so there is you know there is no public square so you know we have fun you know i think.