on tone arm and host of the big picture and i'm christina talman founder of freeney collections foundation we're less than one hour from the final u.s. presidential candidates debate between governor gary johnson of the libertarian party and dr joel stein of the green party both were selected by you our viewers in the last debate on october twenty third in chicago but barr we get to that let's talk a little bit about the issues joining us from our new york studio sam seeder host of the majority report and from los angeles investigative journalist amber lyon

sam thanks thanks for having me tom sam welcome to the program or welcome to the to the debate and amber welcome thank you very much it's an honor to be here appreciate it thanks for joining us kristin oh it's wonderful to have both of you this evening and we're here with political correspondents were having a debate actually in an hour right and i'm doing these three and do and thom hartmann as you may be aware will be moderating that to be if they knew me you would know you yeah well and so amber and sam love to have you on and hear you know for equal actions aren't the america really united and bringing together honest media organizations honest media like yourself and i would love to hear a little bit more about who both of you are i guess starting off with amber. well i'm an investigative journalist and i'm a former mainstream media journalist i've gone independent and i agree with you

it's very important right now for us to have honest and accessible journalism and journalism that really is giving the honest portrayal of what's happening in the united states right now because a lot of vital stories are being censored from even the debate that's what makes me look forward to tonight's debate that i know issues will be discussed like the n.d.a. the drone program and a potential war with iran issues that were pretty much kept out of the other debates christina. and sam i'm curious what what your hot buttons are for tonight well thanks tom and tom as you know i'm a talk show host do a daily show at the majority dot f.m. at an early and radio show thank you you know i look at amber touched on a couple of these things i mean the range of issues that were discussed over the course of the three or four if you want to include the vice presidential debates

was shockingly narrow and the sad reality is in many respects we have two candidates one of whom will win in terms of the general election and mitt romney and president obama will who share a fairly similar wall view and there are differences of course but on some of the the fundamental issues in about the systemic situation we have in this country things like wealth disparity whatnot they're very similar so it's it's good that we're having this opportunity to have representatives from across the political spectrum talk about some of these these real issues and i hope that these conversations continue past the election because one way or another it's going to be mitt romney or barack obama and we still need an informed electorate and one that needs to deal with these issues aside from sort of the shiny stuff that i

think the the corporate media wants us to pay more attention to. well sam thank you so much for that an amber ad just kind of throwing some ideas out there i think we can all recognize that the tea party stranglehold of the system has really caused a lot of the problems that we have today like the passing as you mention of the n.b.a. and the drone war and the patriot act and and amber i mean with your i've researched in your investigative journalism and what you've done a previous with c.n.n. what you doing now what have you found do you find the two party system i mean what strikes you and. that maybe they're doing that are good for the americans and why do you think well yeah i mean i think that it's you know i agree with a lot of the point has been brought up that the two party system is in some ways a facade and in many ways really americans are being kind of led into believe that they have a choice but as sam was mentioning when it comes to issues that are that are vital to the u.s. right now especially issues dealing with our civil liberties like the n.d.a.

there really is no difference between the two candidates both romney and obama say that they support the indefinite detention clause which takes away our rights as americans to have a free trial and it's also very dangerous to journalism because under the n.d.a. we can be accused of potentially aiding terrorists if we don't give up our sources and then we could be disappeared as well and it will lead to a chilling effect in the journalism that we need in this country right now to actually be able to expose a lot of these issues that are going on so so when it comes to the two candidates we're being led to believe that we have a choice but in many ways we really don't and that's why i'm looking forward to tonight being able to to discuss that because when you limit it to two parties and two parties that think so close and ideology then then you're really just don't get a choice amber is there a vet could move you have in mind to take those. in into the party system or even

the system were people could participate in the. well i think that's i mean there's been a lot of methods proposed but i think that something that needs to happen first is the public needs to be educated on everything that's going on and that really lies on the shoulder of the media to be able to give the public the truth because they think they are having a choice between the two parties because the third parties aren't being discussed and so i think the first step is to really be able to educate the public so they know everything that's going on and they know that they do have other options and then from there we can move forward as a nation. well and thank you amber and sam jumping into sam here at sam do you feel like with amber with what she said about party politics the two party system as she mentioned about media maybe money and media and money and politics that do you think that has an impact on things like andy and why i mean of course well you know i'm not sure how much it has impact on some of the civil liberties issues but

i mean look you've got one hundred fifty billion dollars from the oil industry going into the coffers of broadcast television if you want to know why there was no question about climate change during any of those debates that's a great place to start the other problem and i tend to focus on financial and economic issues neither one of these candidates in the general election i'm speaking of obama and romney will hold the banks to account for for crashing our economy in both of them speak of a so-called debt crisis and some of your your viewers may disagree with my my sense of this but the fact is i don't believe that we have a debt crisis i believe that we have a jobs crisis and i and i don't believe that we can cut taxes to grow jobs and i don't believe that. the flip side of that a president obama has has focused on jobs. as opposed to sort of maintaining some of the economic status quo in this country and so i think there's

a whole range of issues that the media and because of course you know we're talking about the corporate media most of the people who are reading the news reporting the news have far more their interests are far more aligned with the wealthy people who essentially are legislators now and so the idea that well we can cut we we can raise the social security retirement age or we can cut back on cost of living increases for social security because you know i'm going to work until i'm seventy five eighty because my job is is to sit in a newsroom and talk about it so i think there's a real. disparity between beyond what's what's going on in the real world and what's happening in newsrooms and i think that's a real problem and i think that feeds in to the journalist perspective on whether or not the two primary candidates that they discuss are really addressing the needs of the american public samp to what extent i mean in the ninety two election ross

perot got about twenty percent of the vote on one issue which was international trade or so-called free trade it really cracked open a conversation that basically got shut down during the clinton presidency because both parties both bill clinton and george herbert walker bush agreed that we should be joining nafta and become part of the deputy oh and that whole thing why isn't that an example of how an outside and you could argue that ross perot wasn't even a political party was just a billionaire who created a logo and you know but brought this issue in and yet it still died i mean is it a given that. how big a slog is it for the soul of these individual issues to be carried forward by anybody other than the two major parties or maybe another way of saying that is to it to what extent do we have to operate outside the party system to what extent do we have to operate inside the party system to produce these kinds of changes that are necessary well i get i get two parts of the answer that first off it wasn't

just with ross perot it wasn't just the giant sucking sound that i was talking about in terms of nafta he was also one of these guys who was saying that the the national of the deficit was going to be a big problem for us and that fed in quite nicely into bill clinton's narrative because you got to remember and i know you do tom that bill clinton was the head of the d.l.c. he was the head of the conservative wing of the democratic party at that time and so to a certain extent what ross perot ended up doing was giving bill clinton a certain amount of cover to cut things like welfare and to to be to carry out a more corporate agenda in some respects but you're right on the part of when we talk about more populist in issues like trade. it didn't seem to have any implications whatsoever and so yeah it's a huge slog and i think you know on some level ross perot could have done us all a bigger favor frankly if he had spent his millions and hundreds of millions of

dollars jump in and out of the race you'll recall and actually trying to educate the american public as to the implications of nafta rather than spending that money on electoral campaigns so in some respects his his one issue got smalled up and he ended up in some respects also sort of. midwife thing some other policies that i think even he today would see is probably pretty problematic by at bain family. i mean we definitely have issues with that job in unemployment the sort of things that does like. the way for us to resolve these issues first we've got to break through that stranglehold the two party system because they've been playing us for well over a century now and they really work together in so many ways into. the course and so through the creation of ballot access barriers and of course electoral reform issues that mr perot did bring

a lot of awareness to that in the federal election commission act of one nine hundred seventy four i mean big hurdles there and and i guess you know with the debate we're doing tonight you know amber why do you feel like being a part of a like what kind of issues do you feel you mention a little bit of what's important to you and and i know you're going to be engaged you're going to be actually there could be a question asked by the. during the debate we're looking for that happening as well but what sort of issues well even the question that i asked has to do with the wiki leaks and whether this if these candidates are elected president whether they'll consider wiki leaks to be a national security threat also another issue that is discussed in the other debates is is what will be done with bradley manning whether it whether or not they would release him if they were elected to the presidency so so there are many issues that just weren't covered and the fluffy romney obama debates that are vital to the american public and another thing i mean we're talking about topics here

that really show how there is no choice in the two party system if you look at n.d.a. twenty thirteen that has already passed in the house and that is actually making it u.s. policy to go to war with iran so essentially the debates you are seeing about whether or not we're going to go to war with iran during the debates are irrelevant because the legislation has already been written that if iran is even a perceived threat to the united states that we have become our next policy to go and attack that country and that's something that wasn't brought up and i believe that these issues just being able to bring them up to the public. is definitely a more honest way to to allow americans to understand what's going on in our country right now because they're being lied to by the corporate media or not told told the whole truth and even when it comes down to presidential debates they're not being given the whole story so i hope tonight it will the debate will help and lighten more folks to

a large extent doesn't what you were just describing the situation with regard to iran doesn't speak to the need for a movement politics i mean the election is going to be over in a couple of days political parties are going to fade into the background movements it seems have always been where the action is do we need do we need to be building a peace movement for example. well i think that there needs to be some kind of a movement because right now the majority of americans have no idea about the n.g.a. two thousand and thirteen and they don't know that it's going to become if this passes in the senate it's going to become u.s. policy to go to war with iran and people don't know about this and so so i think there does we do need to have more movement and whether it be in politics or non-profits coming out and talking about what's going on because the public is not being educated on these vital issues and it's going to be too late i mean it will be it will be striking iran before the majority of americans even know what's going

on and they're being misled into a war that they're really not being given a choice as to whether or not they want their tax dollars to to be spent on it no brain equal we've been doing some extensive research on the commission on presidential debates and i mean the power and the money behind it is. it's the parties the parties of course that's run by as you all know the former chair of the democratic republican party and i'll just kind of turn to you there a little bit tom and i mean how do you see the difference between the debate we're doing tonight nine pm eastern versus the commission on presidential debates from are you part of this while well i'm pleased to be here i think that we need to be opening america up to multiple viewpoints and multiple discussions there's a fundamental flaw in our constitution and as you correctly pointed out you're really a scholar of many pieces of legislation that of consequently followed it but it just submitted to boys this. is because you know madison.

seventeen. seventy one you know he was putting together the federalist papers or they were he and hamilton were writing these articles to try and sell the constitution came to this realisation oh my god you know we've got first president post winner take all actions what do we do about this because of if you have two parties two factions fifty one percent. could win that that's sort of democratic but if you had three factions somebody with thirty four percent could one or four factions of a twenty six percent that's not democratic small d. democratic so what do you do and the only solution you could come up with is not to have political parties it wasn't until eight hundred sixty one that john stuart mill came along and said well how about proportional representation in the history of voting was developed the twentieth century and split it up by new zealand and australia so i see these structural problems as things that need to be broken down so that we can have multiple parties and multiple candidates and a larger discussions but the structural problems are not going to be there's not

going to be the pressure to change the structural structural problems until and that's because we're such an anachronistic democracy i mean you know all the democracies created after eight hundred sixty one after john stuart mill by and large have proportional representation a multi-party systems were not and so although it could be done so it seems like that you know without having multiple voices right now without having third party debates about every third fourth fifth sixth ten twelve party candidates talking about these issues we're not going to end up with with the the push for the change that we need. well it seems as if we're talking today i mean as part of the debate a couple of weeks ago that millions of people i was told watched moderated by larry king. kind of their school is this larry larry of a set of made thing and top ten trending on twitter and and jumping in the sam seder you know sam how do you how do you feel like social networking technology it

seems like that's been a huge change and and how it's going to impact the future i mean that you've got eighteen to twenty year olds that know jobs like you mentioned why not run for office you know these independent individuals that are fed up with parties constitution don't even mention parties that what do you think about social networking technology and and so on well i mean i think it's an incredibly powerful tool and i hope that it remains as sort of open in the access as open as possible but you know one thing that's been amazing coming speaking to you now for from new york in the in the in the wake of the devastating hurricane has been to see what occupy has done. and along with with a couple other groups including. three fifty dot org but they have been providing services for people who have been stranded who have been left without power who have not been eating who have been stuck in the cold for for days now and they've

been doing it in a way that is been fundamentally more successful and they have executed this this type of relief service better than the red cross better than the city better than fema and it really is a great example of of networking both off and online that occupy has done in the network that they have built and i think this is a really important both development and sort of an opportunity to see what has been developing because it occupy really didn't just evaporate it just became less prominent in the media and i think what they have done in the wake of say. it is extremely encouraging both from the perspective of knowing that they're still there knowing how successful they have been in developing relationships with communities that are under-served and they're there their ability to build an infrastructure i think is going to be very important in the months and the years to come as we see the building of these movements that it's what it's really ultimately going to take

i think you know it's good to educate americans via a political campaign but at the end of the day i think it's going to be social movements that start on the ground that build real networks with other people that are really going to make a fundamental change in this country christine and you were on my program on my radio program earlier today and you made the comment that you felt that political parties were dysfunctional and that we needed to move. how do we do that or what were you talking about sure i mean and being involved with the presidential debate and it was american getting four candidates confirmed rocky anderson from the justice party virgil goode of the constitution party gary johnson libertarian and dr jill stein of the green party i realize there is a real disconnect from the bigger parties primarily the green libertarian for share between the campaigns and the national party is than and knowing a lot of people the national party even the green and libertarian party i recognize

as they get bigger as we already know if the democrats or republicans they become infiltrated and they stop listing their constituents and that's not good and so i decided to open up this little book called the constitution and back in ninety eight my father ran for governor in illinois and he got knocked off the ballot and i thought well electoral reform is a real big issue here and and you know i recognize in the and the book that parties don't work so you know i want the people you know in uniting honest media like we have here today and you being on your show was so great you're so humble might add and then that's when the people here i sense that as well getting to know amber and sam but uniting the. nice people and organizations and and honest people's integrity in recognizing that you know the system has been playing us for centuries and and we've got to break that stranglehold by creating that national movement across the spectrum uniting against the establishment and shining a light on money and both the media so if somebody steps forward and says i have. a

solution. here of the twenty different things that i would do about everything from national security to the economy how do they go forward in the process of getting elected any kind of position with polling around themselves a group of people and giving a brand or a name to it in other words creating a political party imagine a huge database that has all the information about this person to what they stand for how much money they've got in campaigns a database a movement uniting all the honest media organizations the interviews as tools educational tools that are inspiring educating these people to run for office imagine a database that provides the ability to overcome ballot access bears that i worked as a national ballot access corner for ralph nader in two thousand and eight so i firsthand with leaders from legal to and know how difficult and what it takes to get on the ballot so imagine all those tools of how to run a campaign how to fundraise and now working with groups and bring him together

raise millions of dollars for liberty or candidates across the spectrum and those are the sort of things that i feel will evolve in two thousand and thirteen and opening the debates and instead run a voting and imagine the everyday person saying oh yeah i know what instant runoff voting is i voted for that first presidential debate so those are just the coming together it would be nice if everybody in america knew what a strong voting was some day your thoughts on those. no i mean i think you know election reform and ballot access and campaign finance you know these are sort of the keys i think and you know i almost feel like if any if if one thing if there was reform in one area it would start a sort of a cascade i mean i think there is a there is a sense among the public that there are certain things you simply cannot change i mean i you know in my. i have a fantasy that there's going to be a split between the electoral and the popular vote in this election and we would

get rid of the electoral college and i am sort of convinced that if one thing went away people could see that you could actually change the process in this fashion for the better i think it would open up the floodgates but you know hope springs eternal. and you know i've learned firsthand from the ballot access barriers how closely the two parties work together to keep more voices in places off the ballot whether libertarian independent ralph nader ron paul even if that number one reason he didn't run for president the last elections because the ballot access barriers so you know ron paul ralph nader they have really ross perot even have really set a light on the need to you know to reform they like tall system and of course opening the debates which has only one component of why we're here today and discussing these these important issues absolutely amber i'm curious do you think that the occupy movement might be or even the tea party for that matter and by that i don't mean the kind of institutional one funded by the koch brothers but just the

average people who showed up thinking that they were part of a grassroots movement that those my be the early. early warning indicators is the wrong phrase because it sounds negative but the early indicators the cracks in the wall the show change grassroots change coming to the coming to america. yeah i mean i think as much as people want to especially within the mainstream media they want to discount the occupy movement as being a bunch of hippies who don't know what they're doing as sam was saying it's an extremely organized movement i've been going around covering events for a book i'm doing for the past year in and photographing and really kind of sitting back and analyzing what's going on and it's it's amazing how self-sufficient these movements are and how passionate and educated the participants are as to what's really going on in the country so if we are able to finally open up the elections to to a third party i would be hard pressed not to find

a passionate tea party or or occupier who who would join that movement as well i think another thing we need to overcome really is the fear amongst people who are upset with democrats and republicans they have a fear to kind of accept a third party because they're so terrified of either romney getting elected or obama getting elected that they'll just throw their vote to the other candidate and that's another huge obstacle that i think you all will have to to overcome as well christina is getting people to overcome that fear and actually accept third party debates and that there could be another candidate into office that that is elected . oh amber i couldn't agree more i mean i do first see the grassroots component of occupy wall street the tea party they were both co-opted in their own way by the status big money and so there's a lot of people just hanging there in that those are the kind of people that are attracted to what we're doing here tonight with this debate them as i mentioned before i just don't see parties working but there's a huge huge uproar of these independents that are really are starting i see

a huge uprising of dependents those those kids cannot be underestimated they're going to be a huge game changer for the two thousand and fourteen local race if you think this is a generational thing well it could be the baby boomers are facing in the youth of the social networking i mean again top ten on twitter our last debate i mean here we are a grassroots organization and of course you can have done it with larry king yourself being there and bringing the media together were so much more powerful respond more honest people in the world in their response and it's just it's been so great connecting everybody and i do perceive people will get very involved and and they won't have any more fear they won't be a living in fear in the sense of how bad things can get so why not overcome that and be strong and be leaders and and put a stop to it and move forward on that and that's going to wrap up our conversation thanks for joining us samuel amber. we're just about

a half hour away from the final third party debates between governor gary johnson and dr jill stein but we'll preview more right after this. i will fight all that i also promise that i buy every single day i'm ever going. to get killed by. my own. the by. a green party president means the start of a new economy that serves all of us that's what we deserve what we don't deserve is pandering you're responsible mom has no mom that's campaigning. hard to

fight once you. get pregnant so we're still not we still still. i'm still not green party candidate for president and i approve this message. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of the thing that we americans call a dog and. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares enough about the country see you sir are a fool. to mind their terrorist cells in the face of want to give us a defeat terrorism coffee on liberal christian public. can secure the borders because it's clear the superheated distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that's.