but if the scales of power tipped the other way what would you do to get the u.s. back on track we take to the streets to find out. and he's not your average joe but one former lobbyist who spent years behind bars now says he's ready to clean house when it comes to congressional corruption turns out you don't know jack but we are doing we used to the store you could walk to see. wait a minute i thought germany and france were supposed to be fixing europe's problems not working for their own benefit looks like desperate times call for selfish measures. good evening it's monday january ninth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching our t.v. . well welcome back from the weekend it was an eventful one and a busy one especially for the g.o.p. candidates who had not one but two debates in

a twelve hour period on saturday night one sunday morning and they were talking a lot and we were hearing the want but we'd like to take this opportunity now to talk about what we're not hearing and i think this is important because as much as social issues can make for great soundbites we're in the midst of tough times right now if you're applying for the job in which your number one priority is to lead this country in a better direction it might be a good idea to start telling people once who will eventually decide whether or not you get that job what your plan is that makes sense right well wrong this weekend and for much of the campaign it's instead been about three things guns gays and god i'll show you some snippets from over the weekend. governor romney do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception and states have a right to ban contraception i can't imagine the state banning contraception for selling contraceptives the interstate commerce clause protects this star kind of marriage is based on a man and woman has been for three thousand years is at the core of our

civilization and is something worth protecting and i polled in my view is we should have a federal amendment of the constitution defining berridge as a relationship between a man and a woman that does not mean that i would agree with certain things that the gay community would like to do to change laws with respect to marry to respect to adoption of contraception gay marriage these are issues that get people riled up for sure but they're not issues that have any bearing on the majority of people's lives in this country so what are those issues you may be asking well let's just take a look at a few five issues the first one foreclosed homes several million families have faced or are facing their homes to foreclosure losing their homes to foreclosure has anyone heard what mitt romney or newt gingrich's plan is to deal with this problem or what about the crisis in the eurozone and how much it impacts not just the rest of the world but this part of the rest of the world this economy as well and what about government programs like social security medicare heating assistance literally running out of money what will they do or what about our policy in the

middle east for the years ahead we've heard bomb iran and we've heard lots of grow the military but what do we do specifically in afghanistan in syria in bahrain and in iraq and finally on this one a simple it's poverty and inequality was rick perry think needs to be done about the growing homeless populations across this country and about widespread inequality in america. well instead the scales of these debates are often tipped in the direction of the three g.'s god gays and guns so why so little attention on things that actually impact the majority of this country while to answer that i spoke to someone who spent a lot of time breaking this down political comedian dean obeidallah here's his take well there actually were some funny moments i think jon huntsman speaking mandarin chinese was great i was really wishing he was cursing out maybe newt gingrich or rick santorum and mandarin it turned out he wasn't and then of course sunday morning rick perry actually remembered the third government agency you want to get

rid of so that was funny right there in the crowd cheered reality is i don't know why people don't i saw a recent arrest musin poll number one issue eighty percent of the holders said it was the economy the economy in jobs foreign policy and social issues much further down that's the issue people want to hear about i have to think the reality is that these republican candidates it's not an easy thing to have an answer they don't have an answer unemployment's gone down and picked october two thousand and nine a ten point one percent it's still now in december to eight point five percent maybe obama's policies contribute maybe they don't maybe it's cyclical in any event the economy is improving and these republicans don't have answers so they want to talk about the social issues the heart issues the ones that make you go out and vote make you make phone calls get people to come out to the polls they scare you it works before it worked many times before they're just trying to use the same play from the old republican playbook i think that's a really good point and there is a notion out there that the reason that this is happening is that people vote with their hearts and not with their heads there are plenty of one issue voters in this

country i've met plenty of them who vote on a candidate who agrees with them on one issue for example guns or abortion do you think this is most of america i mean you said you saw this poll that says most americans care about jobs right now but why and it's not just the candidates let's be honest here are the moderators of these debates are asking them about things like contraceptives. they're trying to find something that's sensational that's what the media does that's their job it was a boring debate about economics how many people are going to watch it let's be honest it becomes bland and boring it's a lot of numbers most people including myself would struggle understanding of what is going on but everyone understands abortion and gay marriage and contraception so those are the easy issues it makes it easier for us to talk about them certainly rick santorum i think of all the candidates run the most socially driven campaign this is a man who literally in iowa said our laws american laws and the bible god's law must comport which means they must agree nobody out there is saying something as

radical as that except for maybe people the taliban frankly he want to get rid of the church and state division and very few people the media are calling him out for it at this point it seems as romney's race they're ignoring him they're letting it go to romney versus obama and then perhaps then we will hear the real issues that we want to hear about how you get american jobs created again how you get this economy going how you going to lower foreclosure how you get americans back working and making the reason their income go up it's going down every year i think if you could point you bring up about rick santorum specifically he has run the most socially conservative campaign that was a very interesting comparison with the taliban but let's go with it but the thing about santorum is he was a nobody up until the you know the week before the iowa caucuses and maybe he's on to something because he ended up coming in second by eight votes in iowa. this is really nothing more than american presidential idol it just happens to be his chance if herman cain was still in the race herman cain would be second that mitt

romney i have no doubt it seems republicans are really taken by as his simple affable charm that he had i may have agreed with him disagree with herman cain a lot i disagree with but i could see why people liked him until they found out about his personal issues that he had going with them i think rick santorum will be the mike huckabee four years ago he'll stay in the race as john mccain won primary after primary mike huckabee stayed in the race four years ago what you know got some votes got some delegates ultimately made some kind of deal i don't think it helped him politically but i think santorum stays in he believes in this stuff he's a truly i want people look at his record he is a scary person is a man who says there should be no exception for abortion in the case of rape meaning a woman raped must carry she is sentenced to carry the child of the rapist in her body for nine months this is a radical this is not mainstream american view along with me the most of all the candidates i think that's a good point and certainly a lot of us especially those of us in the media kind of miss herman cain a little bit at least or again know had an economic plan and you know we're not making this up there's actually these are actually issues that people care about

and i want to show you a little bit of evidence this was caught on camera over the weekend by an a.b.c. news crew romney sort of a millionaire worth at least two hundred million dollars himself. has been struggling to connect with the economic figures of the working class ok so mitt romney and not entirely comfortable with this emotional outburst here but this is a woman hugging mitt romney and telling him how it is is this what we need it dean do you think readers need more people reminding the candidate. i don't think it can hurt let's be honest let's talk about jobs let's talk about the economy you know mitt romney i think in his defense when he wins the nomination i think barring anything happen he's leading clearly in new hampshire i'm always leading polls in south carolina and florida and i think really after that before we even get the super tuesday in march i think mitt romney will just about wrap up the nomination for all practical purposes i think romney will turn back the economy will try to talk about his work at bain capital what a great job creator he was as governor of massachusetts but i think we're going to

get back to the economy that's what americans want to hear what is president obama versus mitt romney and the beat that will be the issue it has to be that's the one we all want to hear about so i think for now this is a game they're running for republican nomination and for that republican issues then we can see the big battle the super bowl if you will that's going to hear the real issues we want to hear about i think that's a really good point i'm just curious why we haven't heard a little more i mean the economy is a good point and i think you also raise a good point when you say it can be confusing to a lot of americans especially americans that are voting in these early primaries to go into detail about economic plans but also i'm really confused as to why we haven't heard more about the middle east you know about bahrain why not let people know about their plans for afghanistan why is all we hear bomb iran and i know some of these candidates do have like they plan listed on their website but in debates with large national audiences this would be a good time to work this kind of stuff in. i agree with you going back to the

recent polls and the best one i found was the rasmussen poll the economy number one by eighty percent foreign affairs eighty eighth not i third or fourth way down there americans don't care right now if the economy is going good then you can start focusing on these other little issues like the middle east or you know pet peeve issues that people might have i think the middle east is a much bigger issue i think it's something that should be addressed rick perry clearly said we want to return to store rock and the bait a shocking comment i think ron paul frankly is the only one talking about the middle east honestly talking about the reasons for an eleven talk about palestine israel you know i wish the other candidates would embrace that and start talking about it but you know what the number one issue is the economy and it's jobs that will be the issue through this campaign foreign policy in the way way down there and that's all most americans frankly want to hear about until the economy turns around dean real briefly last question for you you are a comedian what has been the funniest saying about this campaign to you. to me that

one was rick perry i think the other thing that there were four candidates at one time all thought god asked him to run bachmann cain. is santorum and rick perry also god told the ron i think mitt romney is interesting that he's on he's pro-choice pro-life at one point pro gay marriage in a way anti-gay marriage pro health care and they get health care i think is can play in so he should be made to i think he should be a tough candidate the wrong be to be like whatever you are that's what i am you know so i think it's very interesting i think mitt romney has some flip flopping issues he did in the middle of the big if you remember on sunday he set out to newt gingrich i didn't see those campaign commercials the super pac arrayed against you but it was but the one campaign issue campaign that i did see i kind of agreed with the man has real veracity issues and i think that's going to come up a lot in this campaign and some it's really be romney's credibility versus obama and feeling a we ain't seen nothing yet political comedian dean obeidallah in our new york studio thanks so much well since the presidential candidates are talking about it

and the u.s. congress seems to not want to do anything about it we want to know what regular people in this country think people who are directly affected by those policies that are and are not in place so laurie harford messed with the red resident dot net hit the streets of new york city to pick people's brains and to take the pulse on what people think needs to be improved and to get their ideas on just how to do it. today everyone's upset with how the world leaders are handling the economy so how would you fix that this week let's talk about that book country do you think it's doing a good job was me saying. you know now no actually i don't but what would you do to fix the problem in greece. ingres wow you know i do don't know how did that. because i know i said no no no maybe that's why it's going all around a good word dick fixes each of our problems personally so if we're all out there

working hard and spending money to local communities then that's you know a way of part of building up each local small community eventually the whole country gets strong again right yeah isn't it time maybe for the government to stop trying to fix it and let people and companies fix their own wallets i think that's a good answer yes to fix the economy what should they be doing. they should be pumping more money into it pumping more money they've been pumping millions and billions and trillions and done any good so why is that the solution that we keep going back to the only thing we can do that's so they could also say just do nothing and let people sort it out themselves american people can sort of themselves it's not a matter of not throwing money into the economy it's a matter of living within our means if you don't have enough revenue then you have to cut spending yes so governments are trillions of dollars in debt so it sounds like they have no money right well they have to they obviously you can't stop

everything all at once but you do have to you do have to pull back and you have to come up with a reasonable plan to at least stop the hemorrhaging but we don't just keep printing money and then we don't keep inflating government so that's and most of the european countries are having trouble because the government is sixty percent larger than it should be so why why can you and i see this and government leaders can't. because we don't get paid by the people that are behind the scenes and since i'm not ready for a campaign i don't get campaign contributions by people that he might help or the politicians are they just all lie really so what should they be doing better. other probably trying to change its economy from the oil economy to something else we've got heaps of people with lots of brains and we need to be doing something about the environment do you think those people with brains are in positions of power. so it seems like with the system that's currently in place for how world leaders get elected it might be time for solutions to come from someplace.

all right let's talk now about something that for those of us who live and work in washington is almost part of our daily life the business of influencing congress now despite the fact that a gallup poll found lobbying to be a profession that rates lower in public opinion surveys than car sales and telemarketing is a big business and very influential one that plays a major role in which policies eventually become laws so today we're going to talk to a man who once who was once considered the most powerful lobbyist in washington he was later convicted of committing fraud in two thousand and eight two thousand and six excuse me and served three and a half years behind bars he's out of prison now with a new book called capital punishment the hard truth about washington corruption from america's most notorious lobbyist and that notorious lobbyist jack abramoff joins me now mr egremont i want to talk to you you have it in the title of your

book a hard truth the facts of that so much of what gets done in this town is because of money so i know you outlined quite a few different things what in your mind is the worst part about the system in the way it's set up now but i think the worst part of the system is the fact that a company that's in essence by. bribery legally that people who are lobbying congress for things and people who want things special out of the government are able to give contributions and are able to convey other gratuities to public servants members of congress and their staff that facilitates them getting what they want out of the public treasury and the end of the day though some polite to say it that's bribery and so i think that's probably the biggest problem we have here i think that's a good point a lot of people make this argument a lot of lobbyists i speak to that i interview down the street on k. street they say you know lobbying is the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances this is written in the constitution and now of course the

supreme court is sort of solidified in a way with their decision in the citizens united case how can we ever change if this has been a tradition for so long this is the way things work can it change is it unrealistic to expect oh yes of course we change traditions in this country all the time we had a tradition of slavery in this country there was change obviously this isn't the level of slavery but. the country changes things all the time it was a tradition the doctors used to smoke in america we don't see that anymore. so i think that americans as they get more and more interested in this topic and as they get more and more involved in it they will be able to hopefully pressure their members of congress to correct this part of the system what is your hope goaltimate lee i hope for a few things one is the removal of money used by people who are trying to get things on the government number two i'd like to shut the revolving door between public service and cashing in in the influence industry lobbying or teaching

advising whatever one calls it at the moment number three i think that there should be term limits people should come here for a limited amount of time as was originally intended and go home and resume their lives and number four that every law that the congress passes should be applied to itself such as we see with the problem of insider trading where they can blithely use inside information. to make money and the rest of us shouldn't and can't now i'm wondering i'm just curious i mean before you were taken into custody before you or spent time behind bars you were making about twenty million dollars a year and now i'm within this book and everything i say and every that you've said and the interviews i've seen you and it seems like you've changed drastically but how do we know like how do we know that you've actually changed that this isn't just a ploy to sell your book you know and then in a few years ago back in doing what you were good at anyone who thinks i'm going to go back to lobbying that i think is smoking something they should be smoking even if i wanted to go be a lobbyist which i don't but what congressman is going to take

a meeting to be lobbied by jack a verb often that's a one track to the end of their career if there ever was one you know people ask me all the time are you sincere how do we know here's the ceremony answer is i don't know but you can't know i'm sincere you can't see inside my heart all you can do is see what i'm doing and frankly would say i'm totally insincere i'm not trying to run for something i'm not trying to convince people that i'm some hero i'm trying to tell them what's really going on in the hope that they get angry enough that they go out and do something about it and i can't even myself lobby them to go do something about it but i do think the system has to be changed i've gone through a lot the last eight years since this happened to me i don't know if i've changed completely they're not it's hard to change a person but i can tell you the impact has been dramatic and for me and i have rethought a lot of what i've done what i didn't i brought it all up in my book and i speak about it in that respect i'm certainly sincere hope people take it as such was it sort of a gradual process i mean did you wake up one day and you were like oh my gosh well what i've been doing or to kind of happen over time you know what happened was

originally the press tax me the washington post and i got the articles and there's a blow over in a couple days typical political tempest in a teapot as they say and then there were hearings i thought i will this will blow over i'll just remake myself as a lobbyist and then it dawned on me well it's not going to blow over and i thought well why that. you know me i mean i'm not really doing anything different than i see everybody else doing and then i started to really look at my emails eight hundred fifty thousand e-mails that i had written over the course of my career and i started looking at them a little objective lee and realized my goodness i was doing things i should have been doing this stuff that i really say that is to really do this and i started i decided to take an honest approach to myself and when i did that i didn't like what i saw and that was the process and sort of well before i wound up in prison by the time i got to prison i had already come through this emotionally and intellectually in prison and i used prison time among other things to try to think through what solutions there could be in the system to come out and say something about it i

think it's an important question that you raise why you and certainly a lot of people you know probably have a lot of answers about why you went but you know when we talk about the two thousand a financial collapse one of the more popular well known sentiments that that people say is no one has been held accountable and it's a sentiment that in a lot of ways is true a lot of people have not been held accountable for the collapse and for other instances of corruption associated with it you were held accountable and a few other people were who else who should be the next target well first of all with myself i'm lucky that i was held accountable here all right i'm a religious person and i believe that there's an afterlife and i'd rather get my bombs from here than there i don't want the family and i get more in there but least i got some of it off here what i got punished for i deserve to get punished for how to look at it why me i did at the beginning was what did i do different but i stopped looking at like that and realize number one i was wrong now in terms of

others who's next and what other individuals i don't i don't actually approach it like that no explain why when they say that here's a dirty individual here's somebody who's corrupt here somebody is involved in this people tend to raise that person to high level visibility and they tend to vilify that person and make him into satan and what i. or they do and then they finally get him and throw him in jail they pat themselves on the back and everything's great you know what it's not everything's great because the system doesn't get changed and what i'm trying to advocate is people shouldn't focus on who it is forget who it is ok because if we don't change a system in five years it will be a whole new crop of people and same years only growth as well but if certain people aren't held accountable why would the system change why would there be any incentive to people to change what they're doing especially when they're making the kind of money that you want well i think that the law held people accountable there were two thousand best geishas and the people who ran these investigation though they put me in prison for a long time and i can't say that they are necessarily on the list of the favorite people on earth but they were honest and they were decent professional and they

were thorough and i think the baby found everybody that they had evidence did something wrong and they did put them in jail twenty people were indicted in my case for more and so they did do that i'm not into anybody spending a day in jail and frankly i hope people don't participate in this activity but the only way to change it is to change the rules because the problem is not what's illegal here are the problems what's legal here the laws have got to be changed just last question for you where would where would one start somebody interested and making this you know a cause that they want to champion is it in campaign finance reform is it in lobbying itself i mean what's the solution that would be a great place to start well the four things i do in ada earlier in terms of separating the money keeping the members from making that transition term limits and the. location of the laws i think that we're soon going to see groups come forward with a pledge with where members of congress and candidates for congress have got to take a pledge to support these things and where individuals should start is and getting

keeping where that and getting their members and their candidates they want their votes they better sign this pledge and they better do it and if that doesn't happen something like that run and think never get it through it's almost like we need a grover norquist of our date as i know it's kind of flat right as it was that i was i was the second one absolutely well former lobbyist back everyone thanks so much for speaking with us today for having. well a stern warning today to greece by germany and france that no more bail bailout funds will be given until greece agrees to some new rules and this is one of the decisions that came out of a meeting in berlin between german chancellor angela merkel and france french president nicolas sarkozy the euro zone's two leading powers but what's seen by some as the responsible older brother and sister in the eurozone trying to teach their younger and much more broke siblings a lesson is seen by others as overreaching actions by two countries trying to take advantage of the other more vulnerable ones in this time of need so what does this mean for the global economy and what are some of the other top financial issues of

the day well earlier i spoke to dean baker co-director of the center for economic and policy research i started by asking him to give me his take on the latest moves by germany and france. well i think it is a power grab in the sense that they are strained going the economies of southern europe the profile economies spain italy greece and they're demanding horrible austerity and the policies they're pursuing is just making the recession worse so they're doing two things on the one hand when you cut government budget deficits when you're already in a severe downturn that just is going to raise the unemployment rate but the second thing that they're doing is because the european central bank's not acting as a lender of last resort like say the federal reserve board does it's leading to higher interest rates in those countries which is creates a downward spiral so in the case of a country like italy because they have seven percent interest rates have a bad budget problem if they paid the same interest rate as say germany they won't have a deficit problem so this is really being induced by the european central bank it's

almost as if some of these countries don't even have a fair chance of ever getting back on their feet well you're looking at in the in the case of greece i mean this is their own projection they're talking about a decade of austerity double digit unemployment no guaranteed and then but i mean this is their own projections so you're talking about a lot of hardship on a lot of people and these want people that messed up i mean one of things that you know i keep you have in your mind people it's the folks at the european central bank if they were awake you know their housing bubbles across europe not to say that you know government like greece has lots of problems no doubt about it but if they had been away from the european central bank we wouldn't be in the situation today but if you look at the german economy i mean this is an economy that you know by all measures in a lot of ways is thriving and so why not have the head of this country on the markle be sort of one of the ones out there cracking the whip well it's doing reasonably well it's not doing that great i mean it's still lost a lot of hair i don't like and others in the areas that are but i mean part of what they're doing doesn't make sense even from their own vantage point the sense that

they're very happy to have these export surpluses with southern europe and then they get upset at the southern europeans for being indebted those go together you know it's sort of like if i'm you know lending you money all the time to buy my good. yes and then i'm upset at you for borrowing the money i mean that's that's the way it works there is no way around that it makes sense of but i guess my question is you know doesn't it behoove everyone in the eurozone to be nice to each other well it would hope yes and you know what i think should be first and foremost in their priorities is restoring growth to their economy restoring for employment now the issue of call for good governance that that's really a greek issue you could look at portugal but you know the countries the big countries that are in crisis right now of course are spain it is what everyone's worried about they were in particular profit they were actually pain down their debt italy's debt to g.d.p. ratio so about ten fifteen percentage points between two thousand and two thousand and seven their problems really came about because of the crisis they weren't because of profit spending one of the concerns by

a lot of people in this country is that what we're seeing in the euro zone what we're seeing with the european central bank that a lot of the policies that are implemented there are a lot of things happening there are eventually going to i mean in a lot of ways already having a venture a really going to impact the united states what do you think the u.s. should be most concerned about well these two issues are just you know when you slow the economy says they've done the euro zone's probably entered a recession we will know when you know more data but clearly it's best growing very very slowly so that's weakening an import export market for the united states so that will dampen growth here but the bigger issue is if you've got a full fledged meltdown if you've got a situation i would say you know we had a disorderly default and suddenly the major banks collapse across europe there's no way that the u.s. could be could be shielded but from that would be the sort of event we had with lehman's bankruptcy and oh wait be very bad story that was the co-director of the center for economic and policy research and dean baker. and for now that's going to do it but my interview with dean didn't end there so to see the whole thing or for

on any of the other stars we covered go to r.t. dot com slash usa or youtube dot com slash r.t. america you can also follow me on twitter at christine i'll be back in thirty minutes. this is our time to reclaim the american dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many we are one that when we breathe we hope. to me the american dream is to live in peace and prosperity and freedom and government under socialism is not a government of free. very motivating. force the.