three. three. three. videos for your media drug free media are cheap. mind the gap while millions of americans struggle to make ends meet america's cancer loosening up their belt buckles eating up profits in record numbers so is america's wellbeing falling through the cracks and then there's that. this moment. in the war on poverty in america. and with the u.s. to clare's 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 can't be won. poverty actually looks

a lot like me. and could you sponsor one struggling financially if you saw the presidential candidates might not be willing to face the grim economic reality but our teacher is also your home the government is lowballing its own poverty rates. and want the countdown to the twenty twelve elections begin president obama with his boxing gloves on and gets ready to duke it out with his g.o.p. contenders but could a bad economy and high unemployment numbers be that one two punch a knockout to his hopes for reelection debate. it's monday november seventh seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine freeze out there watching our team. starting out this hour a look into the economic collapse in america for so many people what has happened

feels like a deep dark hole the challenge of climbing out insurmountable the question of how to fix the broken economy issue number one for all of those facing reelection a year from now but in order to understand what happens next it's also important to understand how we got here in the first place well according to the directors of a new documentary it was a deliberate dismantling of middle class prosperity the rampant deregulation the outsourcing of jobs and tax policies favoring businesses and the wealthy committed by american corporations and their elected allies and lobbyists the film is called the heist who stole the american dream here's a little look at it if you're poor you're on your own if you're poor sink or swim. this country is working for the richest people deletes but yes. this is one. of one percent of the bottom line. a long

goal knocker is the producer and one of the directors of this film he is in our studios in los angeles and joins me now hey there donald i know you and francis kasi have been working on this for more than five years and the situation that we're in today is in the minds of many the results of simply some four choices made both by large corporations and law makers but you seem to be arguing in this film based on those you interviewed that this was no accident that actually this was planned talk to me about why you think a bad economy is a heist as you call it and not the result simply of some un fortunate circumstance . well to begin with in our film we highlight a memo that was initially secretly written for the u.s. chamber of commerce by a gentleman who was name was louis powell who two months later was appointed as a u.s. supreme court by richard nixon in that memo he outlined

a strategy for how big business could lobby and take over the government and politics of the united states and therefore allow corporations to assume real power as they had before the one nine hundred twenty nine crash on wall street and i know these are concerns wins and these are concerns that seem to be accurate in the voices of protesters that we've spoken to people associated with the occupy wall three movement taking place around the country i'm wondering if you think that these movements have the power to change you know what you are third has been purposely orchestrated and i know also you are making a shorter version of this down for the movements i want to talk about that as well right we highlight in the film both what's happening on wall street with

the occupation there and around the country but we also highlight other social movements that have already begun to work before occupied made its appearance so for example we certainly document what happened in madison wisconsin earlier this year by organized labor the last segment of organized labor with any power that is public sector unions and we also have to keep that social movements are the only way that things are going to change in this country as we posit it there is organized money and there are organized people but those are the only kinds of our power. i did see that on your web site. and i know i want to ask you about sort of how this all started from what i understand this started as an investigative piece on undocumented workers crossing the arizona border and it seems to me that this is not what the final product seems to focus on i guess talk to me about how

the initial idea and the final product are in fact related well that the bottom line of how they are related is very simple it's called class warfare another term to use that has been bandied about over the recent years is the race to the bottom that is how to lower the wages of people who are manufacturing goods that are destined for the u.s. consumer so if you can off sure those goods. and have them made in china for fifty cents an hour by chinese workers instead of for twenty bucks an hour here in the united states the corporations make an enormous profit but that similarly if you import undocumented workers to work in certain industries like meat packing in construction and hotels you lower the costs and you destroy unions and that's exactly what's occurred over the last twenty five years so you're insourcing

cheap labor simultaneously outsourcing good jobs in other industries so every which way corporations have figured out how to lower their labor costs at the expense of working people unions and increasingly the rest of the middle class of the united states i'm wondering though i mean i think in two thousand and six when you started on this project there was probably an influx on documented workers crossing our borders i'm wondering if you found as the project went on from a lot of what i have been reading is about over the last couple years that the number has really started to go down of undocumented people crossing the borders well bets for several reasons obviously it's a result of the economic depression that we're in here in the united states so why would people illegally or undocumented come into the united states when there are

no jobs and there's an increasing level of chronic unemployment that neither party wishes to aggressively interests in the u.s. congress so therefore there's no oh. how shall i say push for undocumented workers to come into the united states because there really are no jobs i want to talk about in the construction. this movie on this documentary there is another one mccain are recently called too big to fail this looked at from similar issues that you guys tend to be looking at and this was one that certainly hit. home for a lot of people in fact it won the academy award for best documentary i'm wondering how your film differs and what kind of new information might be coming out of this ok to begin with i think you're talking about inside job which was a look at how the collapse of wall street actually occurred in the eyes of the yes

the right to make a foul of the h.b.o. documentary inside job exactly yes you know right feels the h.b.o. film that's currently on the air what we're looking at is forty years what inside job look there was a piece of the elephants were trying to connect the dots between all parts of the elephant and that means do you regulation of industry beginning with the airlines back in one nine hundred seventy seven. increasingly deregulation of the financial industry leading to the savings and loan collapse in one nine hundred eighty seven increasing deregulation of telecommunications allowing for mergers and consolidation so that we now only have a handful of media giants all of these combined together with the intensive lobbying by big business to decrease their tax load

not only for themselves but increasingly decreasing the tax burden for the very wealthy is to talk to him of one percent of the united states population has gotten so fat and so rich over the last thirty years due to tax cuts that were lobbied for . that was not looked at by any other film that we felt we needed to show all of these elements in order for the american people to truly understand what this heist is really all about all right and certainly as you say there are a lot of dots to be connected we want to mention to our viewers the date for that to be released to the general public has not been that but hopefully we will be able to see this soon looks very interesting donald goldmark or the producer director of heist who stole the american dream and if you want to dig 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 called all americans to join the army but in a different kind of way this administration. and. the players in vision the war on poverty in america. and i. urge there's no more room. to join with me in that. out 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 ford examines the poverty level in america and shows us some of the faces of the people who say that it is set way too low. michael suggs

never dreamed he would be here. and i think for us it was a duty in afghanistan a few years in iraq standing in a food. 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. where 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 fifteen percent of the nation's works below the federal poverty line which is a number that was built thirty years ago and is. 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 even be higher and it would include people like mary lee tanner 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 a child. with. occasional. medication. i mean you have. all 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. not have wants 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 think so to earning federal minimum wage has never been enough to lift the family out of poverty if only one adult works earning the federal minimum wage will get your just fifteen thousand dollars a year you know 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 childcare no car no cell phone only a landline really only necessities and we know 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 we 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. and make its 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 on poverty individuals living in poverty are facing so many challenges every day one of the last things from their mind. who should vote for. and it's

a word used. to use the. money to come up with something appeals to the record constituents it's a lot harder for opposed to something. 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 in florida artsy washington d.c. . and i want to give you an update on the movement in this country to take money out of some of the largest most powerful banks and move it to smaller nonprofit 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 by november fifth this past saturday and this came to be known as national bank transfer day and the movement was in response to a proposed debit card usage fee by some of those banks which they later renamed done still it turns out people were angry as to the idea that their bank which

charge of take a look at some of these numbers in october credit unions around the country gained six hundred fifty thousand new customers and also four point five billion dollars was moved out of major banks. the seemingly evil ways of big banks and the notion of too big to fail just one issue candidates for the two thousand and twelve election will face and guess what it is now just one year to go twenty selection takes place on november sixth which means president obama has just story hundred sixty four days to convince the american people now like this country better than whomever he faces off against the g.o.p. will it be mitt romney herman cain michele bachmann ron paul on the matter who it is there are some things to take into account first of all no american president since f.d.r. has ever won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on election day was higher than seven point two percent that was going to plummet right by the way in november of

one nine hundred eighty four when ronald. you don't want to second term and he won by a landslide well right now the unemployment rate is at nine percent but many say that number should be a whole lot higher so will this year be different or will the economy be president obama's biggest enemy r.t. correspondent liz wahl takes a deeper look into this important question facing the country. well we're so close to the father. so when. he campaigned under the promise of hope and change one year until america lexx the president some ask where is the change obama promised he had a very shallow act to follow and he really is now oh that very much obama's approval ratings hovering just over forty percent americans on happy new to the nation this small economic outlook recent data shows record poverty levels in the nation with over forty nine million people now living in poverty and middle class land by foreclosures and job losses unemployment doggedly stuck out over nine

percent since world war two no one has been reelected to a second term if unemployment above seven point two percent but some points away deadlocks congress ensuring no bill offering economic relief passes are really think he's doing the best job that he can do obama now scrambling to ditch his lame duck image issuing a slew of executive orders i move which allows him to bypass congress for congress won't act i will but is it too little too late some say his greatest hope may be his g.o.p. rivals this is such a cool state i mean come on live free or die. you know you gotta love. it you don't have a job if you have not reached the brain you will say this is really had an infiltrator from the democratic party that's giving them the law is like we gotta cut back on the idle did you know social security is running rampant why we don't get we have the raided medicare czar to control it telling people list is they're

losing their homes they don't have any jobs here to afford health care well presidential incumbents are usually getting a political advantage with one year to go until americans head to the polls obama faces an uphill battle with a dire threat the economy is there now americans are disappointed now hoping for that. they were promised back in two thousand names and washington was law r.t. so with one year to go the question on many voters' minds is has the president obama not done enough in his first term or is it too little too late to help me answer those questions and many more earlier i spoke to erica payne founder of the agenda project as well as neil mccabe reporter for the hugh for human events i started off by asking them specifically what would need to happen to give president obama 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 he may win but he may win such a damaged country that it's going to be even more difficult for years in the second term eric all of a responsible. well i mean the fact of matter is the country is already damaged and it's damaged basically the eight years of conservative in finance and said the best thing that the president right now is to let everyone know the ways in which conservative policy is. the brink of collapse and what he's trying to shore it up and. think this guy's going to work harder than i have i think if you look across the. earth public and you know i mean i get that it's the best reality

t.v. he's ever seen. that. the world. 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 in showing 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 were hopeful that obama would sort of unite the country and we could mobilize together but he's just been so diverse of 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 hurts 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 that came out this would be and i want to just put this up there this would be of lonnie ends up being the g.o.p. candidate i thought 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 his 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 so the economy needs to grow just a little bit what do you think erick how do you think it will. mean the highest band. the great i'm told story of this unemployment crisis and i and i just let me clear up because critical of president obama has many other people have been is it is

a lifelong progressive i definitely could have seen much more aggressive on some of the issues that i care about from our street reform to job creation but i bet it just in time you know one of the top stories of this last three years that we have across the board a slow but steady. number of jobs that are created now is that enough to make up for the fact that george bush lost seven hundred fifty thousand jobs last month is not best now but it is moving in the right direction in a negative poll on those upward numbers are in the public sector is. i mean you know they're being fired and laid off because a tea party. it's basically it's cheaper yes there is a steady. economy. so you know i mean you're looking at a situation here where eric obviously can't pay no young people in the tea

party well it's crazy i mean you have to choose between austerity for people who rely on the government you have from government jobs or government programs or government contracts or austerity for contract for 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 huge a steri program of higher taxes on taxpayers and so the tea party i think is just second world i think we're paying enough right now if we. if we saw four percent of american. progress. rapidly. on it taxpayers. depending on either more than two hundred fifty thousand dollars here or certainly who are. healthy you know that you know that the vast majority of those people are small business men i'm 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 saying that higher taxes let me step in for a second i think erica 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 g.e. being one of them that they didn't have to pay any taxes this last of sort of the ridiculous i mean the tax code is a mess. you know the corporate tax rate you know is like let's say and or true is a 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 you know lower the. get rid of loopholes simple fly it we're just saying make it revenue neutral don't take more money out of the private economy to feed this beast 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 in the moment while majority of the time the person who raises the most money is the person who gets this is. a ridiculous percentage some of president obama's biggest donors back in two thousand and eight goldman sachs microsoft google j.p. morgan chase and citi group i mean if 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. well i mean you know corporations are is not just a right and like you know they're deeply hurt by the administration. and constantly can see columns up and they named the real story harper ations

bats and they live by the ability and. when they. say you're going to see as much my guy and president obama's campaign is going to let the republican nominee say 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 i just sticking with the money and the two thousand and eight costly of 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 double this year what he raised the first time around what do you think that says that this is the money that we're talking about first of all i think eight 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 act of free debate of the open marketplace of ideas obama not only has a financial of from 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 ribbons and bridges and schools and parks and then he can show he can fly in on the taxpayers' dime and give a speech and that's what it's called no official business but i would i would ask you to recall the 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 could be bush despite that money and if obama loses the mandate of heaven the

sort of spirit of the nation then it doesn't matter how much he spends eric are going to let you respond to that and how that the last word well it only matters how much money you spend in a political campaign in case you also need to hire someone to knock on doors to get your voters. to it's just that money isn't always the determining factor i was on the. watch and on the treadmill i actually. ran it was one of his where you could change the channel it was attached and every single ad in the last month of the election is a campaign ad and there comes a point where your brain just sets off an excruciating to watch in the first place and there's nothing back he gave up for actually that is a really good point 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 bombard us during the commercial breaks of all our favorite television shows founder of the a democrat.