church in new delhi has to. be which is very much the load of clothes. made. believe that most of the leading medicine in the was from the repercussions that's. what the countdown to the twenty twelve elections begin as president obama puts on his boxing gloves and gets ready to duke it out with his g.o.p. contenders look at a bad economy and high unemployment numbers be the one two punch the knock out of his hopes for reelection well debate and president obama wasn't the first one to struggle with a bad economy. from inspiration. and now the. new war on poverty in america. and without the u.s. declares its longest ever war outpacing the war in afghanistan by decades only this one is within american communities so with record poverty rates in the u.s.

is this a war that simply cannot be won. poverty actually looks a lot like me. and could you spot someone struggling financially if you saw the presidential candidates might not be willing to face a grim economic reality that our teacher is also your home the government is lowballing its own poverty rates. it's monday november seventh four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for watching our team. it is now just one year to go the twenty twelve election takes place on november sixth twenty twelve which means president obama has about three hundred sixty four days to convince the american people he will make this country better than whomever he faces off with against in the g.o.p. will it be mitt romney herman cain michele bachmann ron paul no matter who it is

there are some things to take into account first no american president since franklin roosevelt has ever won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on election day was higher than seven point two percent was the unemployment rate in november of one nine hundred eighty four when ronald reagan want to second term he won by a landslide but now it is at nine percent though many say that number should be much higher so will this year be different or will the economy be president obama's biggest enemy and it was hope and change then a lot of people are wondering what the new campaign promise will be maybe just have a little more hope and all bring a little more change i guess want to wait a little longer for that one but with one year to go the question on so many voters' minds is how has obama done enough in his first term or is it too little too late to help me answer those questions and so many more earlier i spoke to

erica payne founder of the agenda project and neil mccabe reporter for human events i started off by asking what specifically would need to happen to give the president another shot. well i think the president needs to sort of gather himself and reconsider his strategy what he's doing right now is he's pursuing a strategy where he needs to energize the base and sort of excite those sort of occupy sort of spirits but he's in danger of aggravating those wounds that he promised to heal and i think he's going to he may win but he may win search and damage country that it's going to be even more difficult four years in a second term erekat a response to that. well i mean active matter as a country already damaged and damaged basically eight years and conservative and on and said that the president can do right now is to let everyone know the way in

which conservative policies rock history brink of collapse but strikes to shore it up and says this. guy's gonna work harder than i am and i think if you look at earth public and you know actions by babbling yesterday that it best reality t.v. ever states. it even beat. the world series we'll i mean certainly when president obama first came into office people argued that president bush certainly did a lot of harm to this country and a lot of even republicans would agree with that statement but here we are three years and sure that the economy be in a better place than it is well first of all i don't accept the premise that george bush did a lot of damage to this country i think obama had a fantastic opportunity though it was a new start and there were a lot of republicans a lot of very conservative people myself included who are hopeful that obama would

sort of unite the country and we could mobilize together but he's just been so divison it's really it's really been shocking to a lot of people i think frankly when i talk to people on capitol hill they're almost hurt the way the obama administration has ignored them has dismissed them as sort of when they give a press conference they sort of pretend that they're reaching out but you know he literally goes months without talking to republican leaders. erica over the weekend some interesting predictions of the chances of the races came out this would be and i want to just put this up though this would be if romney ends up being the g.o.p. candidate as it was a romney obama election if there is a zero percent growth in g.d.p. in twenty calls there is an eighty three percent chance that romney will win the election president obama has just a seventeen percent chance of keeping a job but if there is just four percent growth and twenty twelve romney has a forty percent chance obama a sixty percent chance of winning for the economy needs to grow just

a little bit what do you think erick i do you think it will romney's audience growing and the great undertone story of this unemployment crisis and i and i just got to be clear and critical of president obama and many other people have been is that a lifelong progressive i definitely said is. much more aggressive on some of the issues that i care about from last week form to job creation but but at the same time you know one of the top stories this last three years that he's had across the board a slow but steady. and the number of jobs that are rated now is it enough to make up for the fact that george bush or seven hundred fifty thousand jobs last month has an office know that it is moving in the right direction that negative zero on is upward numbers are that the public sector is taking on

a. lead off on its head says she. it's basically sad but it's a serious matter which is in the economy so you know i mean you're looking at a situation here where they're probably out of money yesterday at no one in people who want to party well it's crazy i mean you have to choose between austerity for people who rely on the government either through government jobs or government programs or government contracts or austerity for contract for roughing the taxpayers. you know the democrats the progressive the liberals whatever you want to call it they seem to have no problem with giving this you just staring program of higher taxes on taxpayers and so the tea party i think is just ahead well i think we're paying enough right now if we you know if we saw four percent that would be useless americans. we're going to. ravage it on

taxpayers he may get in and it's not even more than two hundred people out not here or certainly more than a million dollars you know for you know the good to see you know that the grass majority those people are small business men we're talking about dry cleaners you're talking about farmers you're talking about people on hot dog stands who are going to be going to be paying that higher taxes let me step in for a second i think eric i might also be talking about some of the wealthiest corporations in america who you could call them job creators but in the last several months we've seen a lot of them let go a lot of their staff there are so many places in the tax system in this country that it seems that a lot of these places i know ged one of them that they didn't have to pay any taxes this last a little ridiculous and the tax code is a mess. g.e. you know the corporate tax rate. is like let's say i'm not sure what is it thirty five percent say and somehow because of their deductions and their plans and their

loopholes and their this and their leases they're able to come in zero and get rebates we say lower that the. get rid of the loopholes simple thought it we're just saying make it revenue neutral don't take more money out of the private economy to feed this vsto i think that's probably something erica might agree with you i want to move on though i want to talk about the money in terms of campaign fund raising the bottom line is there is overwhelming and only well known majority of the time the person who raises the most money is the person who wins this is. a ridiculous percentage so of president obama's biggest donors back in two thousand and eight to goldman sachs microsoft google j.p. morgan chase and citi group i mean if it's i think if president obama asked the question are you better off today than you were four years ago i think a lot of those companies they might say actually we are erick i want to ask you do you think president obama will get donations from those same huge companies this time around. yes he definitely but i mean you know perforation are as

much as they try to pretend and that has you know they're deeply hurt by the administration in washington you know mentioning ashley winehouse to make up a name but i mean the real story perpetration. and they want bobby ability. to allow lending and you know you're going to see is much my angle and president obama's campaign issue going into that republican nominee it certainly will be a different kind of ballgame this time around with the citizens united case and the fact that we may not know exactly who and how much is given to each candidate just taking with the money neal you know two thousand a costly is campaign in history sure we have the numbers i think five point three billion dollars was spent by candidates political parties and interest groups on the congressional and presidential races well guess what the projected cost of the

twenty twelve election is eight billion dollars may even be a little bit higher is it possible i mean that president obama may need to raise even doubled this year where he raised the first time around what do you think that says that this will is the money that we're talking about first of all i think a billion dollars in political debate is healthy that's vibrant you don't you don't see these kind of numbers in cuba or china or other places i mean this is this is active free to be the open you know the marketplace of ideas obama not only has a financial a fund raising machine but he also has air force one he also has the ability to give out money all over the country to cut ridden the bridges and schools and parks and then he can show you can fly in on the taxpayers' dime and give a speech and then what it's called you know official business but i would i would ask you to recall that nine hundred ninety two george bush the father. raised

a lot of money boatloads and boatloads of money and he had air force one and he had all the power of the presidency and yet clinton had captured the spirit and he was able to beat bush despite that money and if obama loses the mandate of heaven the sort of spirit of the nation it doesn't matter how much he spends erick i'm going to let you respond to that and have that the last word but it always matters how much money in a political campaign it has alternately to hire someone to knock on doors to get your voters to. it's just that money isn't always been a charming factor i was on the show and on the jam watching on the treadmill watching the t.v. run it wanted for you to change the channel action every single house in the last month of the election exam paper and there comes a point where your brain just shuts off an interest or shooting to watch in the

first place and there's nothing and asked he never gave a first that is a really good point and certainly with one year to go that is one thing we all have to look forward to whether we want to or not is all those campaign ads that will be on barda during the commercial breaks of all our favorite television shows founder of the agenda project erica payne also reporter for human events neil mccabe thanks guys so much and i want to look there's a little deeper into the state of our economy with a look at what poverty actually means it's been after all fifty years since president lyndon johnson made this speech and a call to all americans to join the army in a different kind of war this is ministration. here and. declares some visual war on poverty in america. and our urge grew stronger zano

a murderer. to join with me in that effort. the war on poverty speech made on january eighth one thousand nine hundred sixty four so how have things changed today and how well is the enemy in other words poverty really understood kalen board exam of the poverty level in america and talks to some who say it's but right to whoa. michael says i never dreamed he would be here in st frustration that i think for us it was a duty in that when you get to say three years i reckon i'll be standing in a food line pick it up. but after his unemployment benefits ran out food for others became the only way to feed his ten year old son something he doesn't think politicians in washington understand i don't see them out here ok. here in pennsylvania avenue. we are you living in the real world u.s. census figures show that forty six point two million americans now live below the

poverty line two percent of the nations of school of the federal poverty line which is the number that was built thirty years ago in a certain twenty two thousand three hundred fourteen dollars. so if you really look at poverty and you were to take it just for the true cost of living today it would be higher and it would include people like mary lee ten or so when she was working earn five thousand dollars more than the poverty line for an individual just ten thousand eight hundred ninety dollars and still considers herself for some time she had to chuckle too with. medication. my medication. shoots i mean you know you got it you are the most americans think of the homeless or the unemployed as the face of poverty in america poverty actually looks a lot like me. a person who gets up every morning goes to work gets on the metro

comes in may or may not have lunch that day and a lot of times you wouldn't know that that person is struggling financially because they go to work that's a six show earning federal minimum wage has never been enough to lift a family out of poverty if only one adult works during the federal minimum wage will get you just fifteen thousand dollars a year meanwhile the poverty line is calculated only by tripling the cost of the most basic food but harvey's group calculated the true cost of living in washington d.c. with just the very basics for housing food transportation and child care no car no cell phone only a landline and certain really only necessities and we go there for a family oh one it's thirty one thousand dollars a year so to have a family of four living on twenty two thousand dollars a year when you know it really cost at least thirty one thousand dollars is really just there's no comparison there experts say that if the poverty line was adjusted for economic growth since one nine hundred sixty nine when president lyndon johnson

declared his war on poverty president johnson's war on poverty has this one goal provide everyone. his own way it would reveal that the real number of americans living in poverty is a shocking twenty eight percent. so why hasn't america seen another war and poverty individuals living in poverty are facing so many challenges that every one of the last things from their mind is who should i vote for. and it's a lot easier for politicians to use the six certain somebody can come up with something that appeals to the record constituency it's a lot harder for a poet to simply troops from the ocean despite one in four americans struggling to make ends meet tackling poverty has yet to become a leading issue in the two thousand and twelve presidential campaign ill informed r t washington d.c. . we're starting to hear terms like the poorest of the poor people who live at

fifty percent or below the official poverty level nearly seven percent or twenty point five million americans are actually in that situation today so how has the united states reached this point and what will it take to turn things around so when when will today's president declare war on poverty and not just declare it but sending reinforcements and when will the american people join him so help me answer all those questions and more i'm joined by michael snyder the founder of the economic collapse blog dot com he joins washington say hey there michael let's begin with this the u.s. census data is out how has president obama responded to this new information about poverty. well the obama administration seems to think stock market is surging but everything is ok but the truth is that the worst of the war they keep increasing slaughter of the ghost in the economy is improving but as you noted there are now

six point seven percent of all americans or the thing in extreme poverty that is the heart of bubble ever recorded and then you just look at the regular poverty numbers last year two point six million more americans lose under the poverty line but the most americans of all of the poverty. and if you look at that in this for the long term trend i can you're to go to one of mine americans even in poverty today we have one out of every certain americans living in poverty and i know that i know you wrote about this recently including a part and that you wrote in one thousand factories about poverty that was absolutely astound you and i want to put up just a few of those on these are some says such as six from last year according to u.s. census data the percentage of the very poor went out in three hundred out of three hundred and sixty of the largest metropolitan areas and the poverty rate of children increased by twenty two percent with one of four children on food stamps

also you wrote that the number of americans on food stamps in general has increased seventy four percent since two thousand and seven also something that important we talk about children we also should talk about the elderly one out of six elderly americans now lives below the federal poverty line and i'm wondering do you think the majority of americans understand how dire the situation is. i think we're so isolated today we all have our own jobs we all get in our cars literally little while right in the office and sometimes we don't realize how many people out there are really suffering but when you take a look at the bigger picture people really really are hurting with twenty two percent of all children in the united states living in poverty that's twice the level that we face in countries like france or the u.k. those very very disturbing when you go to number american bug it increases every single market risk in the world also said a brand new director today it's all forty six million americans that are on food

stamps and as you noted that some creep but seventy four percent since back in two thousand and seven so poverty is exploding but americans have become so employed they might live in a wealthy community they might live where they're not exposed to this but it's expanding all the numbers show it i want to talk about the report that we just showed so the poverty line in america is set at ten thousand eight hundred ninety dollars for a single percent and twenty two thousand three hundred fifty dollars for a family of four do you think those numbers are set a little too low that seems to be what a lot of people that came and spoke to for this report they said you know we make more than that but resold can't survive. oh absolutely region and you can see it is across the nation for example the number of american banks and. it's more than forty per cent so this most recent economic downturn so it's really at the top of the of the americans today that are the working poor they go they work their

part time jobs they work burgers they work at wal-mart but it's not enough that you know elderly but big make enough where they don't. they don't all by federal rule system so they're trapped in between they don't they make too much so to qualify for assistance but not enough to their families so that's definitely the case but even if you look at the numbers that the government does give us a clue so the poverty is definitely on the rise i mean when you've got one out of every six elderly americans on living in poverty a lot of that is still security and in part of that but they still can't make it this winter many older americans are going to have to choose between eating their homes putting food on the table or getting their medicine but the real tough choices made i think that's a really important point we always talk here in our key about you know that nine percent unemployment number that we keep seeing how that's much lower than it actually should be but the fact is a lot of these numbers that we're seeing the bottom line is it's showing

a trend and that trend is that are a whole lot more people are struggling and they're struggling in even more dire ways than they were before i'm wondering what you think mike i mean what's the point of even having poverty rather. well we definitely would want to identify and help those that are in need of and we definitely want to give them assistance and so on but those are only temporary solutions what they really need are jobs but the jobs are leaving this country by the millions big corporations are shipping our jobs out to their us where they are is the world with much fewer and so and you need action jobs are being replaced by service jobs which pay a lot less and people are having a hard time to work in europe they always get jobs all the profits are rising the price of putting gasoline in your course is rising so american families are even more squeezed the never let me of the income of the decreased the last couple of

years while inflation rises specially on essential so people are in more squeeze than ever and so should or american families are being pushed into poverty but also there are certainly some really interesting points raised about the problems a lot of these are the leaders in our country are starting to identify the very same problems what we still seem to be missing is some solution to a really good point about those jobs going overseas seems like perhaps the next year that the twenty five campaign will bring up some new ideas that have been filed but right now i think that definitely needs to happen founder of the economic collapse log dot com that's michael t. snyder. well i want to give you an update on the movement in this country to take money out of some of the largest and most powerful banks and move it to smaller not for profit banks we told you about this last week how about eighty thousand people had signed a facebook pledge to move their money out of banks like bank of america and wells fargo i november fifth saturday which came to be called national bank transfer day

all the movement was in response to a proposed debit card usage fee by some of those banks which they literally negs on that fee so it turns out people were angry just at the idea that their big were charged in october credit unions around the country gained six hundred fifty thousand new customers and also moved four point five billion dollars out of major banks. and it's not just the banks people are angry at take a look at us. so how here are two two women of baring it all in the name of women's right to tell you the details coming up.

the east. coast nobody seems to know. never persuade the face of the argument that they're being overly dramatic.

well if you can't beat them might as well get naked in front of them that was at least a decision made by a couple of activists in italy over the weekend i want to show you the scene in st peter's square outside of the vatican on sunday following the pope's sunday address . these women apparently protesting against the feminist policies of the vatican that they say quote impose patriarchal medieval concepts of social and cultural positioning in women they say they're angry at the world wide into abortion lobby the attempts by the catholic church to quote restrict the entire in appearance of women and they say they're angry about proposed has condemned the use of contraceptives the activists were arrested by italian police and spent four hours in detention kind of an interesting way to go about thanks wonder if they got their message across probably not going to do it for now but for more on the stories we

covered go to argue dot com slash usa or you tube dot com slash r t america is sure to stay here on r.g.p. coming up next the capital account with more on lister.

more news today violence is once again flared up the phone saying these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are rooted a. cool. wealthy british style in the sun. times square. markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our.