the ten thousand dollars a month you know is goes so much because the crying is believed to be part of your spirit you heard him right a ten thousand dollar martini and that's not all that's on the menu for america's richest one percent how about a burger stacked with gold lakes on it while america's elite line and designs on the woman yacht. lost my house my dues. and now i'm just going to surviving millions of americans struggle daily at the put food on the table some even wait for days on end for handouts to feed their family and it's a harsh economic reality to digest from one home to another many have nothing to be

thankful for. this is from our eye. this is the one to me. hard. and fighting to survive it's no secret that the us is power hungry especially when it comes to new forms of energy but sometimes the greater good isn't so good for everyone as lawmakers look to america's energy future what legacy are we leaving behind. it's friday november twenty fifth four pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl if you're watching our t.v. well the holiday season kicks off at a time when our economy continues to struggle and it's perhaps this time of the year when the growing income inequality gap and wealth disparity in the u.s. becomes most apparent despite high unemployment record. poverty levels in

skyrocketing food prices a select few are paying shockingly exorbitant prices for their meals from a one thousand dollars desserts of a ten thousand dollars martini are if he's an associate you're going to shows you how some are living the leg various life and the slumping economy. america the land of plenty but these days that twenty is only reaching a few with one country split into two planets it's a tale of two americas right now new york city a place where the number of people on food stamps is soaring at a record three million but it's also a place where one hundred seventy five dollars buys wall street fat cats a burger a black truck and memories with gold we were martini for ten thousand dollars at an exclusive new york hotel that came thousand dollars a month in his costar mark because they're crying in space to be buying the experience this is you know if you still recall site. what makes you.

unique and so special here we're going to order a dessert for a staggering one thousand bucks nobody has ever had priors remorse that's that's for sure with a forty eight hour advance order his thousand dollars sunday is purchased up to five times a month again with the edible twenty three carat gold leaf gold doesn't really have a. put it does have a very cool texture salt for you caviar and i double sugar flour which takes eight hours to make and the rarest and most expensive chocolates in the world the ice cream served in a crystal goblet similar to the one used i think that yes in the past couple of years people are suffering and they're saying you know why would you have a thousand dollar ice cream well you know why would you have a bentley a short ride across town a green tomato what

a. felony. pear trees like this one for the money that from new york to spend on a desert is seen as a lottery where off a thousand dollars over a thousand. over a thousand close to two thousand individual would have gotten a meal a fifth of that number of people this place eades among them and the people that came in for food. and got enough. food over a million people per year last year and one hundred percent increase in demand for crude this place knows the face of hunger demand for any available produce simple food such as can be few and peas has been skyrocketing and pantries like this one as the gap between rich and poor is at an extreme so is the number of people who need any help they can get to put food on their tables sixty year old said regina is on disability and a father of three and a pamela with a relation but couldn't be simpler sweet potato juice. ground beef grit

turkey for my family members. or we. will last. a retired single mother of three i'm a cold war and i'm going to extend cabbage on disability after being born in an explosion she struggles as crude prices continue to rise produce pressure cools iscar high i mean is our wages but our. local bread for these people love stories not even a dream survival is their only priority there's just something amazing about ingesting gold they skin a very nice and gave well we didn't get a ham but i got a big turkey and a lot of foods so it's pretty cool strains giving might not be so lucky for carol and millions of others as experts predict the gap between those with an empty

stomachs. and this internal urge she's real. that we're seeing as the income gap widened so too are the menus is something that the occupy wall street protesters have noticed and one restaurant is making light of the occupy wall street movement and even making some money off of it take a look at this this is from the b.l.t. steak restaurant in washington d.c. this is the one percent burger which hungry patrons can purchase for fifty eight bucks so what do you get for that amount an eight ounce kopi burger talk with flora gras old leave it at a group of times and then there's the ninety nine percent burger for those of us like can't stomach spending nearly sixty dollars on a burger on the menu for this burger a six thousand scab burger patty melt slop between some wonder bread and american cheese all for a more reasonable nine ninety nine so this is just a funny way to illustrate now a very real income inequality gap in the u.s.

joining me now to talk more about this founder of wide awake new dr charlie mcgrath welcome sharlee so ten thousand dollars for a martini one thousand dollars for dessert meanwhile we're seeing record poverty levels and what does this say about the economic state of the u.s. today. well it shows the people that are participating in occupy wall street movement just like the people who participated in a tea party movement the core group of tea party members people who are tired of seeing excess corruption which we was free to mainstreet are absolutely right i mean you know we're just we're listening to guy tell us how you just get this special feeling from ingesting goal it is absolutely unbelievable we have forty seven million one hundred eighty thousand two hundred four people in this country the day after thanksgiving two thousand and eleven had to use food stamps in order to put food on the table last month it's utter insanity and what's led us to this

point it's really real simple you know we're back in two thousand and seven with roughly around eight trillion dollars in national debt and today we said it fifteen trillion dollars in national debt this money isn't going to buy go desserts for the ninety nine percent is going to bail out the to big to fail who are benefiting socialize their failure while keeping their profits private and they are the ones who can go out in it for this new york city property or these ten thousand dollar drinks or this gold leaf dessert menus or this you know sixty dollar hamburger so none of this you know unfortunately unfortunately alternative media media like our t.v. now are showing these stories but the mainstream media is doing exactly what your report alluded to they're turning the ninety nine percent into a joke i've said it before and r t what they like to do is take the absolute least eloquent person they can find put it in front of a camera and say this is the real ninety nine percent this is the real order of us

they don't know what else to do they're bored they're hippies they need to get a life this is the message i mean it's putting out fortunately our t. another alternative media arts are showing the true reasons why people are in the streets in this because they have no voice and they're completely frustrated and charlie all this and widening gap between the rich and poor but we're losing we think you're losing. as a middle class recent brown university study shows that in two thousand and seven forty four percent of families workin steadily when it were considered middle income and like a larger middle class in one nine hundred seventy when sixty five percent were part of the middle class and that's when the laying down of this class how do you think that it's affecting social mobility and the us. well you know everything sort of into a service sector job and you get kids to get out of college eighty percent of them are moving back home because there's no job for them to go to so i saw that same report you were talking about it also showed an unbelievable jump in the percentage

of people who either fall into some poverty line or the elite class and unfortunately you know most of the people are falling into the poverty line look it just goes to show that the trends the real metrics that we follow are painting a picture you know we're seeing one point three million foreclosures or you're seeing one point five million bankruptcies a year and we're seeing a congress and a government that is government by crisis that can get nothing done on behalf of the people and everything goes on behalf of the true because fail so as this continues as this form of crisis by government continues we're going to continue to see a further decline in the ever evaporating middle class and this train it isn't going to reverse we're not heading for some upward spike in income in this country it's going the other way and lastly you know what these occupy wall street movement they have caught the attention of the media and of the public you think that more attention is now being paid to the issue of income inequality. you know it's

a good question and i don't know if the income inequality is being paid attention to anymore i do know you're right about where people are starting to realize that these people are in the streets and they have the reason there are just a bunch of what this hippies and i think we're going to see despite the mainstream media trying to portray them as something other than you know people who are in addition completely and totally this enfranchise i think we're going to continue to see this movement grow and i do think we're going to start to see more of the synergy between the occupy wall street movement and the core believers in the tea party because when you boil right down to it we are protesting against the same people you know the occupy well occupy wall street movement is going after the too big the tea party movement was going after too much government and the sooner we realize that they are one of the same our government serves their financial masters or wall street as soon as we realize that we'll also realize that we're in the same camp and throwing insults at one another is exactly what the powers that be want us

to do they want to drive a wedge between us so well that with each other rather than look at the real cause of why we're where we're at which is in washington d.c. and on wall street charlie thank you so much for your thoughts on this that was charlie mcgrath founder of wide awake news that dot com well today is a black friday the day which has become an american tradition with hordes of people rushing to the store sometimes in the wee hours of the morning to get those door busting deals but the rush for the all turned of violent and sampling says ugly start police are now looking for a woman who pushed for a crowd of shoppers in order to get her hands on a bargain one shopper actually pepper sprayed fellow shoppers at a walmart in los angeles is to me. oh my god great that and a big box jewelry counter if you think north korea and all deeply folks are. only. happy shopping season folks. so while some are fighting to get that bargain my

growing number of americans are having a hard time feeling thankful this year with over forty eight million living in poverty thanksgiving feast is growing out of reach for more and more americans this holiday thousands lined up in los angeles to get a free turkey dinner the country waits the county right behind us for food insecurity and the nation artie's are among the lindo reports from l.a. . lost my house my business and now i'm just kind of surviving it's difficult for lisa jones to plan beyond tomorrow she struggles to make it through the day the mother of three worries about her oldest son fighting the war in afghanistan if she's among the millions of americans who go home every day. you see the elderly the sick pregnant women you see people with polio people. people have done well eager shoppers camped out in front of retail stores on black

friday joan sleeps on the cold pavement waiting in a different line which turkey i used to be a dog groomer i used to have my own shopping now i do not and i'm in desperate straits so this is a godsend this is my purse here here jones is in the lone the elderly and disabled are among the many people who wait patiently in this line in hopes of feeding their families david brown lost his janitorial job to the firm he worked for shut down we got out here three to three nights now in the rain in the cold. called justin bartholomew joined the army after losing his job in the financial industry. he can see that even members of the armed services are fighting a battle at home. for the soldiers that. people. remember. most the problems. this

year even the organizers of the give away needed a helping hand probably never had to want to be there for any donation. but you know sometimes. you will run out of turkeys we have to go to chicken by sunrise the line grew as far as the eye could see this a microcosm of a hungry nation divided by the haves and have nots we haven't spent enough time on child creation all of this wrestling about whether or not the bridges got to pay their fair share is ridiculous the rich pay fair share government figures show that los angeles is still the worst place in america when it comes to food insecurity and these long life for a free turkey giveaway may be an indicator of that but throughout the nation it remains a large problem with forty nine million americans struggling to feed themselves on a daily basis sixteen million of those are children it's amazing actually to so

many people. fifteen hours later in freezing temperatures on a roller coaster of emotions jones can smile again knowing shell feed her family this holiday season it just brings up the rest of the rest of the month and. this is a balance but as millions of americans struggle to find work hang on to their homes and feed their families the fear is that even those who have been able to help in the past may soon need a handout themselves in los angeles problem in the party. and october two thousand and eleven movement organizer kevin visas here in studio now to talk more about this kevin happy thanksgiving i understand that you had some thanksgiving festivities over there freedom that we had a great thanksgiving we have a great video to. cooking thanksgiving dinner and the major course is the

thanksgiving turkey which was have another and so we had. one had ever so many years and. then we had three working. for turkey so well there you go. but so why do you think more and more people now you know they're making their way over there spending thanksgiving protesting at freedom plaza because it seems that more and more people are having a hard time putting food on their of their own tables record highs. the same time we're seeing the wealthier get wealthier and so the insecurity actually is what driving is driving this just like the draft affecting every family . every family unless you're in the top really has person the top one percent even their stressed two percent or so. it's a widespread impact and what we have to come up with solutions to solve that and i

think the first place to start is looking at the wealth of a country with four hundred people with the wealth one hundred fifty four million and those four hundred people are paying an average seventeen point four percent federal tax. twenty five to thirty percent unfair situation so additional security that this is creating so people are willing to go out and sleep on the streets we have people who are doctors x. doctors nurses we have teachers we have employed a long term we have hundreds on the size of americans it covers all ask all segments of except for the top one percent they're out there because they see the wrong direction they want to do something about it it's really the american. and while people are protests are making their way to freedom plaza on thanksgiving today it is black friday. to go along with this event we're seeing this occupy black friday movement and they say that they are not necessarily anti-capitalist

they are anti crap. so there was. a different we did two things. the first thing we did was we had a free store. people could drop. out of their entire. hard drive consuming. action on the big box stores target where we came out in support of the workers who would. come in last night. to repair for the store. just extreme conditions and of course organize we support them and we did a. call on repeat. you are a target you are and you know. consumers and pushes people to have and so we have problems with that kind of unnecessary consumer society we've got to create

a sustainable economy. and survive. resources workers in the top one percent but what do you say to those that say about you know this occupy black friday could be hurting the economy because you want people to spend money to pump money into the economy to stimulate the economy when you say to those like you know this is. the economy is the wealthiest corporations the world sitting on two trillion dollars in. kind of way of the housing bubble that was created by the lending practices and when it burst and people are still paying those housing bubble prices that it will hurt the economy the government does not respond to the urgent. for jobs and to deal with the with the deficit to cut military spending to create a fair progressive tax system not this almost flat tax that we have that's what hurts the economy people staying home and not not spending money you don't have we don't want you going further in debt when your jobs are insecure that will hurt the economy and you know i also want to ask you so shall services now are on the

chopping chopping block because the so-called super committee failed to slash one point two trillion dollars in spending so what extent do you think washington is it responsible for growing the growing income inequality washington is totally responsible we had the occupy super committee on freedom plaza you can see it on our web site occupy washington d.c. dot org c.-span coverage we will into the season encourage want to see it we also put our own report and ninety nine percent deficit reduction plan and we look for was tested and proven methods of solving the deficit of creating jobs again the kind of thing we discovered was it's actually relatively easy to solve the deficit crisis is relatively easy to get the jobs job creation going what's lacking is the inability of the government the things up to the one percent the tax tax rate in the one percent now are so low even though they have the wealth it will ninety five

percent they pay a small percentage of income tax and people who work we are the parents wealth more and tax work the less we do that we can solve the deficit problem we face up to the wars cut military spending again we can we can we can solve the deficit crisis and jobs programs that we there's a need for all sorts of jobs our infrastructure is crumbling teachers are losing jobs we have a lack of questions there are two big hospital sources the workers there's not the lack of jobs as lack of willingness of government to put money into those jobs you look at where jobs been lost in this recession you can look a lot of public service public jobs federal and state and local jobs we've lost a large jobs and are not creating jobs here that's where the solutions lie the solutions are. evidence the problem is the corruption of the government the. rule and shifting power kevin thank you so much for keeping us updated that was october two thousand and eleven movement organize our privacy. and don't drink the

water while a million struggle to feed their family as residents of the navajo nation are fighting to survive and once again becoming the victims of the u.s. government their story next. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then something else here's part of it and realize that everything you. are welcome is

a big issue. well many and americans struggle to put food on their table part of the country's indigenous population are literally struggling to stay alive and it's a problem i get little attention that deadly radiation levels to leave are leaving the navajo population on the verge of becoming extinct arts even more and i reports from northeast arizona an area rich in uranium but ruined by american demand for it . this north east part of our zone of encompasses part of america's navajo nation native american governor terry torie rich in your rhenium but ruined by the us is demand for it's a different world we don't have money we don't have the funds the people from the dominant society have we also have conditions we're trying to live through like

living in the abandon your a new mary is here and drinking the contaminated waters that we had drank before swallowing a life of pollution and disease many navajo inhabitants were healthy employees working and living around uranium mines beginning in one nine hundred forty four nearly four million tons of uranium ore were extracted from navajo lands under the auspices of private companies and the us government the radioactive resource was in high demand for development of atomic power after four decades operations close shop but neglected to clean up abandoned mines homes and drinking water were less than ten many did with elevated levels of radiation and residents were left behind to battle deteriorating health conditions my needs are eking walking is difficult i've been diagnosed with some form of cancer i feel pain below my chin i'm taking medication now u.s. officials say radioactive toxins in the air and drinking water have been linked to

thousands of pieces of lung cancer bone cancer and impaired kidney function this is for my eyes. the one i need to pay. for it's are live with iraq's and. this is what i take for my thyroids forty year old cancer survivor rolanda says the people of the number who nation have been exploited by corporations and abandoned by their government you have no generation there's nothing after me. my daughter don't want to have kids because she's come out the phone my son the want to have kids but i have one that has kids but there's problems in two thousand and seven the environmental protection agency launched a five year plan to clean up the navajo nation which included five hundred

abandoned mines extending to utah and new mexico twice a month fresh water is delivered to some fifty four thousand citizens living in contaminated areas many say federal officials fall short of helping to rebuild a decent quality of life but people feel that through all these years even to this point two thousand and eleven nothing has happened they have seen no action see no roads being improved no housing being built. very very little has happened so they're questioning how long to live like this all be here i have no plans to do i don't have a choice but most of america battles a crippling economy the country's oldest inhabitants are literally battling to stay alive and as washington struggles to pay its bills and create jobs many worry that this life and death issue for the navajo nation long ignored may soon become

a long forgotten arena party we are. allowed as a front up more in the stories we covered go to our three dot com slash usa and check out our you tube page at youtube dot com slash r t america the capital account with lauren lester coming up next.

look. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images gold has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule the day. look. wealthy british scientists are. sometimes the tirelessly.