providing heating assistance to needy americans maybe uncle sam should have thought about the heating bill or saying give me your tired poor old man. and from a heated discussion to a cold front moving in a cage fighting icon known as the snow man getting ready to fight again this time in the american political arena and delivering some serious blows to the system we'll speak to jeff monson about the find of his life. good afternoon it is friday january sixth four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you watching r t well these are troubled times we live in now we're going to talk a little bit later in the show about the jobs numbers out today. the unemployment rate now eight point five percent but the economy is still in many ways in shambles

and with the presidential campaign in full swing there are plenty of ideas being thrown around about how to fix things but few people are offering real think outside the box new ideas so we decided to look elsewhere and to introduce you to an american mixed martial arts artist and political activist jeff monson. if you follow m.m.a. you may know him as the snow man he's a two time winner of the a.t.c.c. submission wrestling world championship and a brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion. jeff is also a self-proclaimed anarchist and is very outspoken about some of his views about this country and its place in the world and he is with us now and joining us from our studios in miami hey there jeffrey you know radical times call for some radical ideas a radical recipe for change so my question to you is what's yours. well i think the

first thing we need to do is socialize things you know the things that work in this country right now you know the police department the fire department those kind of things they're really social energies and you know we have a bank we had you know u.s. bank that only charged like one percent interest and you know guaranteed loans to people and was a nonprofit organization and we did this with the health care. you know those are things that could help this country right now and jeff i know that you've said in the past that we don't need a political revolution we need a social revolution what do you mean by that talk a little bit more about. well you know the you know whether it's obama or the republican candidate that you know gets in there as as president it's going to be the same thing you know obama came in with all these high expectations of you know it's changing the health care system changing the way you know our economy is ryan you know green jobs all this and he ran into

a brick wall and he's finding that out now he's having to sacrifice a lot of his ideals for you know the status quo you know party as usual so you got to get all those people out you have to have the people make the decisions and we live in a democracy supposedly but it's not really democracy it's core proxy and the corporations are the ones that run the country and the government goes along with it because that's where the money is you say that president obama had to sacrifice some of those ideals what do you think it is you know what is in place in the system that made him i mean he certainly came in i remember four years ago all the speeches he made he came into office you know with a lot of big ideas what do you think happened between the time that he was inaugurated you know and before that and now. well i remember when we were news inaugurated in and i was actually doing a speech that night for a left wing group and people in the group or i there was some liberals in there

actually crying because they were so happy and they thought the world was going to change the united states were going to change and you know bush was out but i was you know i won and i think that things are going to stay as usual and. i think he just the reality set in you know he had to take a lot of he earned more money for his campaign than any other president in history people realize and so they want something in return for their contributions he you know he's in power because of a reason not because necessarily had the best ideas or he's the best speaker he was the best candidate for what the corporations thought they could get. and there are some mccain and he's in there and he owes them and he kind of run into a brick wall like i said and he's got to pay him back and you know the corporations really run this country you know it's back when hillary tried to shove this sweeping idea that she was going to change the health care system and guarantee health care for every american citizen and i remember her talking to congress and

they were literally laughing out or i'm like you don't understand how things work here so i think obama is running in the same situation to be fair though jeff i mean you're not a person that necessarily embraces government as it is i want to put up a picture we have a photo of you taken in a limpia washington and this is you spray painting the capitol building there talk about your idea of an arche and i also how these views affected your career. well people always ask me the anarchy has a name kind of with the media you know where people go break things and destroy things or like always anarchy it's chaos but really anarchy to me means. everybody has absolute freedom and what i mean by absolute freedom is that absolute freedom to do what they would like to do with their life you know when you look at it as not just the economy's bad in america you've got to look at the world people don't you know take their world view sometimes and i see you know the u.n.

says that fifty four percent of the world goes hungry every night lives on less than two dollars a day but i also see the people that you know maybe in america that are of the working poor and such like that they can never like what i call self actual eyes what they want to do you know how many people want to work at wal-mart or want to work at a gas station or want to be a cab driver maybe that's what they want to do and great but so many what i think is the. worst thing of this is you know people united states around the world are not be able to do what they want to do with their lives you talk about you know medicine and you know the next great a limp dick athlete or maybe even the next great m.m.a. fighter or you know the next painter or a great teacher all these things get lost when people are just trying to survive trying to get you know something for their kid to eat or themselves they either put a roof over their head or you know simply have enough to make it through the day so actually contributing to society we waste you know our potential as human beings

and i think that's the biggest crime of you know what we call capitalism and these views just don't seem that outlandish to me i guess but i know that these views and some of the things you've been associated with have had an impact on your career i know that i was reading you were spoke out a deal with a nutrition company and that got paul talk a little bit about what i mean you're a world famous fighter and a lot of organizations don't want to be associated with you why do you think that is. well like i said i said the media has kind of idea what anarchism is and as i write you move people ask me what it is i said what do you think an ideal society would be like if you could make your utopian society and everything idea what what would you want and people say well you know everybody's workin and you know there's health care for everybody and schooling for people that want to go to school and secondary school and people have a roof over their head and transportation and i said that's where anarchy is people

have the. are able to utilize these things that we have enough for everybody that that's really what it is and it's it's a system of absolute justice is what it is as far as my career has been hurt me fighting i've been able to fight all over the world and no organization if you're outspoken you know it draws fans so they're not going to turn you away but as far as sponsorship is very difficult me to get a sponsorship right now because. of the way like i said it's been portrayed you know spray paint the capitol building and get arrested for protesting this kind of thing and you know sponsors don't want to be associated with that so money wise it's it's definitely cost me as far as being part of organizations actually fighting that hasn't and yet you still do it you happy you got a you got a bill look at yourself and i'm here in the morning right now i've got kids and i want them you know i want them to be able to grow up and in a world where you know they have you know there's justice and they have the potential to do what they want to do and just real quick jeff let's talk about the

presidential campaign unfolding right now i'm wondering do you like any of the candidates is anyone saying anything that's that's sort of resonating with you. you know i guess everybody has like ideas that that's on our i like you know if you had to choose one i mean some of ron paul's ideas are you know going strictly on the constitution and this. you know they sound really good in my opinion he's the one that's probably the least likely to be affected by campaign time contributions or being swayed by you know people giving them money and that kind of thing but you know then there's you know the talk of his you know racist ideas as well and immigration and that when you when you vote you're putting someone else's. idea of what should be and instead of your own you know you're given someone else permission to make decisions for you and it's kind of strange to me that people would would give that kind of power to someone else you know because we vote for

someone and then we kind of complain and everything's every four years something always remains the same it's change change change that's that's everyone's key word because they don't like what went on before and you know the new candidate says we're going to make change but when is it ever really going to change that's why i say we need a social revolution not a political revolution we've got to change the system all right make it you know like you said people say capitalism isn't working it's fall and i say it's working perfectly and that's why we have the trouble that we have now right very outspoken american mixed martial artist and political activist jeff monson we appreciate you being outspoken with us today thanks so much. still ahead here on our jobs jobs jobs the obama white house is telling a fall in the unemployment rate to the numbers really tell the true story of the economy in the u.s. . coming up next.

people calling. for free and fair elections. you can hear behind me loud explosions.

to the capitol and. well there was celebration out of the white house today in response to the latest jobs numbers it was not only a lowering of the unemployment rate but it exceeded expectations by almost everyone here's president obama little earlier today. this morning we learned that american businesses and did another two hundred and twelve thousand jobs last month all together more private sector jobs were created in two thousand and eleven than any year since two thousand and five. all right so according to the labor department employers added a net two hundred thousand jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to eight point five percent so an end of the or spike clearly here now let's take a look at last year for the same month the unemployment rate also fell but last

year a fell to nine point four percent with about one hundred three thousand jobs created so a bit of a difference here that i don't think we're going to hear many people saying this year's numbers are bad news but you also won't hear many people telling the whole story so we want to try and do that for you when we ran max fred wolf a senior analyst with green cross capital who is in our studios in new york max and let's talk about this i mean is this simply when it when i think about december jobs numbers i mean could this simply be retailing retail hiring up for the holidays which means that possibly at the end of this month those seasonal staffs will be trimmed down or is this just really really good news interpret these numbers for me. i think it's somewhere between those two things so we know that the e-commerce space or eat tailing did very well people ordered an unusual number of things online and bought them online for the gift season here in november and december and we also know from today's jobs report that about fifty thousand are one of every four new jobs created was created in warehousing and transportation is

almost certain that some of that will come down we also know that most of the jobs we saw hundred sixty eight thousand of the two hundred thousand jobs that we learned were created over the month of december two thousand and eleven were in the service sector that's about eighty two percent services that does tend to be a little bit more volatile that being said these are better numbers and we've seen that they're part of a strange thing trend which is guardedly good news although i think the verdict is still not in and it does look like we have had a pattern now for three years where the first few data points in the new year so the december january are often pretty good and then the economy has some trouble going forward and there are some reasons to believe that that may be the case again this year visit the tensions with iran and the ongoing serious problems in the euro zone i want to take a look at some other things happening right now in this country max here's a story that we should be seeing everywhere right now in wichita kansas boeing has announced they're going to be shutting down its eighty year old plants there so

this means that two thousand one hundred sixty people will have to look elsewhere for work although if you know anything about wichita there really isn't anywhere else to look and some of those jobs are going to be going to other factories in other areas but here's what the company says in a statement it said in this time of defense budget reductions as well as shifting customer priorities boeing has decided to close its operations in wichita to reduce costs increase efficiencies and drive competitiveness all right so this is happening but guess what last year the chairman and c.e.o. of boeing jim mcnerney got a little bit of a raise just about one and a half percent but that puts him in the nineteen point seven million dollars range and only twenty million in salary for one person well more than two thousand people who build airplanes lose their jobs what is going on here. well i mean i think sadly that wichita boeing decision moving some of those jobs to illinois and washington state will be will hit particularly hard in part because he did point out boeing jobs are very good jobs in there very few high paid manufacturing jobs

for those folks to look for next to in the wichita area and they just do it it's kind of consistent with the pattern we've seen which is part of the reason i think some of the cheerleading around these job numbers is a little premature and that is we've had a hard time finding jobs for people but we had a much harder time creating jobs with a living wages in the united states one of the reason those boeing jobs are so widely sought after is that the unionized boeing manufacturing job is still one of the best benefits one of the best paid jobs out there so while for the u.s. macro economy it's good news that those jobs will probably end up largely in washington state milla noise state on the other hand for wichita it tells a story of communities that are still very vulnerable and it highlights that we're even less good at producing good jobs than we are producing jobs over the last few years i think it's a really important point to bring up and something i don't think i mentioned which is that in these all these new jobs created last month i think the majority of them were jobs for you know current couriers drivers you know truck drivers and people

who deliver things so i think that tells a story too you know it's interesting max the other day we were talking about whether or not america is ready for a multimillion dollar president and mitt romney of course as i'm talking about and i want to put up this quote that i saw that suggests you know maybe maybe now we are mit professor paul osterman said think about who gets their cover on the cut who gets their picture on the cover of fortune he used to be the ones that were admired the ones who treated their workers as a family now it's all about reengineering downsizing and shareholder value so talk about this shift max i mean is there no turning back. well i mean things can always change and there's one thing you learn from a study of history it's that predictions are mostly a way to hang yourself and so that i think the future's not unknown it's unknowable that being said we've been on the long thirty to forty year trajectory toward being kind of more and more short sighted in a little bit more materialistic so the best of american business involves building

enduring brands and production and distribution methods they really contribute to both job creation but also to the meeting of human needs and desires and the sort of least good elements of american business tend to be to get rich quick schemes where everything is a zero sum game and you grab as much for yourself as possible building nothing to last and doing nothing for anyone else and we certainly seem to have gotten that balance wrong of late i don't think it's impossible or unthinkable that we get back toward greater balance than we are at the present moment i certainly hope so and there are occasionally someone carving signs along the way although it would have one would have to be honest and say that has not been the trajectory we've been on and let's talk about something else going on here by the end of this month a whole lot of people in this country will be losing the ability to heat their homes and this is a result of the budget which you may remember quite a bit of funding from the federal low income home energy assistance program while our own marina took

a look at another program that's helping those people hundreds of thousands of them but where that help is coming from isn't welcomed by all. winter morning in the south bronx in new york city outdoors the temperature is near freezing indoors. seventy seven year old alice many otis is bundled up brewing a pot of coffee and raising the heat just enough good to take the chill out of the air the retired grandmother of seven lives alone on a fixed income and each winter as federal programs continue to be slashed the struggle to come for gets harder i go around screaming and waving i mean all they do was raise raise raise raise and i mean it's the same dollar you get in so how far can you push it one hundred gallons of oil one hundred fifty gallons of oil is about right now about close to six hundred dollars however venezuela has been

stepping in to make alice's life a bit easier by delivering one hundred gallons of free heating oil each winter she is a four year beneficiary of the citgo venezuela heating oil program which provides free heating oil to five hundred thousand more americans living in low income neighborhoods and shelters throughout the country president chavez often demonized by washington march the program in two thousand and five following hurricanes katrina and rita all i know is that he was caught and he was crying to the people of the united states and i'm sure he he he differently like obama differently and who were we to tell these people how they should live i mean are they convey they are our country with their not being generous to give us what comes out of their earth at no charge so could you really have ill feelings against them. i'm thankful for it. i really am in an interview with the venezuelan newspaper el

universal america's leader well sort of expressing similar sentiments of gratitude president obama recently accused the chavez government restricting human rights and taking frightening steps. democratic values the venezuelan leader didn't mince words while responding directly to his u.s. counterpart you know want to boma i feel sorry for just off the black communities in your country what you mean to them you the greatest disappointment of recently is the poor people of your country you're a great disappointment to them it's time that we stopped minding everybody else's business and took care of business we have children that are graduating from college with eighty ninety one hundred thousand dollars that they have to pay back its to p.d. it's looming in them just and they can't get a job a struggle getting that much harder in the land of opportunity really important

r.t. . all right so max i want to bring you back into the conversation i mean coming up this year we will no doubt hear more about cuts that need to be made basic things like heating for homes. what do you think about the future of this i mean do you think we're going to see more relying on other countries for a solution. well i mean i think that the united states has played a diplomacy very aggressively for sixty years and it's not surprising that other countries including chavez's venezuela would play some of the political game back i do think that we've seen stagnant wages we see a lot of people outside the labor force and we see a lot of people dependent on state local and federal programs that are being cut here and we see that going into the cold winter here at least in large parts the united states and a cold winter in which heating and other basic costs are rising in part because of diplomatic tensions between the united states and iran around the oil producing

gulf region the straits of hormuz so i do expect to see feud if you will heating issues be fairly large and i think we have another problem here which we really deep committed to low income and needy americans with increasingly aggressive and increasingly kind of cruel basic policy trajectory for a long time and that's left a lot of people quite literally out in the cold so i think we're going to see various governments do aid based political machinations like we do and we're also going to see them find a lot of folks in need who might say yes to the offers in part because there are a lot of people who have been left out of what we have had for economic dynamism what little we've had over the last few years i think the really important point and it's really very well timed it's very timely because of what we're seeing with these presidential candidates the g.o.p. candidates we hear for example newt gingrich saying things like you know blacks in america should demand paychecks as a as opposed to food stamps from obama certainly that's going to play

a role but i want to get your take pick your brain a little bit about what you think is going to be i mean most people agree that when we think about the income gap the gap between rich and poor that it's gotten bigger and most people i think would agree that in order to make america work a little better that you need to make that gap smaller so i want to ask you max what do you think is going to stand in the way of making that gap smaller. well i think we have a tax system that was once designed to be progress of in other words to tax more heavily the higher income was and less have lead to lower your income was and to take some of the money tax from higher income households on from large corporations and distributed to produce what we in economics call public goods a good public education system public transit some kind of health care and education over the last twenty five years and really over the last four or five years quite aggressively we cut our investment in it so even in the midst of today's really powerful jobs report which was a good number we saw no attention paid to ninety four hundred public school

teachers who lost their job in december and we keep seeing those cut so we've cut the programs we've reduced the progress of our tax level and at the same time we've employed a star system in every field in which we have a small number of celebrated and worshiped folks making hundreds of thousands to many many millions of dollars a year side by side with lots of people of this society tends to kind of denigrate and put down who work virtually just as hard almost or sometimes even more just as well and come home with some tiny fraction of the other person's salary so i think we need to get rid of the celebrity worship star system and we need to take a hard look at an increasingly regressive tax system which is making inequality worse what it was designed to make inequality better and less bad i think that is a really important point the big ideas unfortunately a little easier said than done only time will tell them how this changes next senior analyst at green cross capital. well we're almost done here for this hour

but up next is capital account with your list so let's check in with lauren all right lauren it's friday the jobs numbers are out i can only imagine that you're going to talking about that oh you don't think we would miss a chance to call b.s. on some government data do you christine especially when it has to do with jobs and this jobs crisis that has been so long term and deep and structural for the united states so we absolutely will clear up any of the good news coming out about this jobs report will really break it down for you also too we've got to talk about europe christine because there's more bad news out about europe there always is every day but more news today that leaders are meeting leaders are constantly trying to figure out how to keep it together keep the euro together we're going to talk about how to exit the euro with someone who might have a solution that's worth for him two hundred fifty thousand bucks support of a million dollars all right you get for it certainly what happens in the euro zone an important factor for lots of other countries to lauren thanks so much and for us

that'll do it for more on the stories we covered go to our t. dot com slash usa or you tube dot com slash r t america you should also follow me on twitter i'm at christine for south. the influential sunny's technology innovation called the list of elements from

around russia we've gone to the future covered. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.

good afternoon happy friday welcome to capital account i'm more in lister here in washington d.c. now while the euro continues its downward spiral that we've seen since mid october europe's technocrats and other leaders are talking about how debt stricken countries can stay in the euro and we know mirco z. will come together for a meeting on monday month the american. people . that of course is the fake german viral version lucky for you we have a german economist to translate but we'll find out from him how countries could.