mr. good evening i'm christina televen of the free and equal elections foundation thank you very much for tuning in to watch this final presidential debate tonight our previous debate a few weeks ago with larry king drew millions of viewers giving us an worldwide

viewer's access to candidates that are ignored by most of america's corporate media i'd like to thank our t. america for hosting the debate for providing an open platform for sharing independent views and that are suppressed by mainstream media for broadcasting this debate internationally and for providing a neutral feed so networks across the country and glove can also broadcast the debate thanks also to our international media who are airing the debate from countries like sweden china switzerland russia and israel i'd also like to think our political correspondents for taking part in this important debates and our sponsors for helping us promote the debate they all represent a diverse group of honest media organizations and individuals spanning all types of political ideologies there are twenty seven people running for president and i wish we could have them all here tonight i'm here because my father was shot out when he

ran for governor of illinois ron paul ralph nader have been an inspiration for freeney collections to spread fresh ideas and viewpoints and to inspire others to join our growing movement of peace unity and prosperity. there electoral reform we regret that they could not be here tonight but no they are here in spirit at this debate but the basic questions we receive from the public are so thought provoking and honest they helped us come up with the final question for tonight we only wish we had more time to cover all the issues now i'd like to introduce my cold moderator for tonight's debate the best selling author nationally syndicated syndicated radio host and host of the big picture tom hartman thank you christine thank you and thank you to the candidates governor gary johnson and dr joel stein tonight's debate will be ninety minutes will be divided into seven questions plus a few more if we have time we'll begin tonight with a two minute opening statement from each candidate afterward each candidate will

have three minutes to respond to each question plus two minutes each for a bottle they will also have seven two minute rebuttals each that they can use whenever they want or what ever question they prefer at the end of the debate both candidates will have a chance to make a two minute closing statement was determined before the debate the governor gary johnson goes first governor johnson your opening statement well i think that this country is in big big trouble and the issues facing this trouble the issues facing this nation are something that we can't bury our heads in the sand over so for starters let's let's not bomb iran let's stop with our military interventions that have us with hundreds of millions of enemies to this country that but for military interventions would otherwise not exist so let's get out of afghanistan tomorrow bring the troops home i believe that marriage equality is a constitutionally guaranteed right on par with civil rights of the sixty's let's

end the drug war let's legalize marijuana today i would have never signed the national defense authorization act allowing for arrest and detainment of you and i as you. citizens without being charged i would repeal the patriot act i think we need to balance the federal budget now and that means addressing the in title means medicaid medicare that means addressing military spending i think the biggest threat to our national security is the fact that we we are borrowing and spending money to the tune of forty three cents out of every dollar that we're spending. when it comes to jobs let's eliminate income tax corporate tax abolish the i.r.s. replace all of that with one federal consumption tax i am advocating the fair tax which i think is the answer to tens of millions of jobs being created in this country because we are talking about

a zero corporate tax rate environment it ends up being cost neutral over a very short amount of time it's really the answer when it comes to american exports because we're going to bleed existing nontransparent taxes out of what we export it's the answer to china and then given the opportunity i would abolish the federal reserve if that were legislation that congress would pass it's an inside job that the treasury prints money gives it to the federal reserve federal reserve gives it to the banks that zero percent of the banks give it to you or i know treasuries in a closed loop making profits off of you and i. think you know dr jill stein your opening statement please thanks so much it's great to be here and thank you so much to our team and for you well the american people certainly are at the breaking point but in this election we can turn that into a tipping point and start to take back our democracy and the peaceful of just green

future we need to serve we are in crisis now we are the american people are losing our jobs decent wages our homes affordable health care and higher education our civil liberties are under attack. and the climate is in an accelerated meltdown the wealthy few are making out like bandits doing better than ever while every day people are being thrown under the bus and the political establishment is actually making it worse imposing austerity on everyday people while they squander trillions on wars for oil wall street bailouts and tax breaks for the wealthy that's why it's time to stand up and make your vote count and vote green in this election every vote for my campaign is a vote for the solutions that the american people are clamoring for right now. that means an emergency green new deal to create twenty five million jobs in the unemployment and jumpstart the green economy that spells an end to climate change

and makes wars for oil obsolete we're calling for health care as a human right through medicare for all that covers everyone while it saves us trillions of dollars over the coming decade and we're calling for bailing out the students not the banks we can end student debt and make public higher education free as it should be and it pays for itself we know that from the g.i. bill where it returned to seven dollars for every dollar we invested we got seven dollars back in benefits to the economy so we can end the failed racist war on drugs downsize the military and the drone wars bring the troops home by standing up for this now these are the solutions we deserve they are within our reach we just need to stand up and insist that we have them now by voting green in this election thank you dr instead of those today of factory our first question today a factory in freeport illinois the belongs to some sort of technology literally

today right now as we speak has been shut down and more than one hundred seventy american workers are watching their jobs shift to china this is more than a domestic jobs issue it's an international trade issue for the past. in years fifty thousand american manufacturing factory have been shut down and five million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last decade is free trade really in the best interest of the united states and would either of you support more protectionist trade policies to stem the loss of american jobs dr stein. you know i mean we're seeing in certain saga in that experience where bain capital actually invested in send sada and is now sending those jobs overseas nearly two hundred jobs and it's not that they're making that they're not making profits they actually are making profits it's just that greed has no bounds bain capital seems to be in the business of buy it strip it flip it fended overseas harvest.

additional profit and throw the people in the workers in the community under the bus unfortunately it's the free trade agreements that enable the bain capital's of the world to steal our jobs and send them overseas so you know some would lay that mitt romney's feet but barack obama bears an equal responsibility for actually expanding these free trade agreements and right now there is a transpacific partnership being negotiated as we speak behind closed doors even congress is not able to know what's going on in this agreement but it has been leaked and what we know is that it will continue to offshore our jobs continue to undermine wages here at home and in fact undermine american sovereignty as well because this free trade agreement actually gives the power to an international

corporate board to decide what what regulations and what legislation we have passed in this country passes muster with them so they in a sense retain veto power. over our legislation this is a direct attack on american sovereignty as well as a real attack on our economy so in fact we need to change these free trade agreements not only stop the trans-pacific partnership but go back to nafta up brought to us by bill clinton go back to the colombia south korea and the panama trade agreements negotiated by barack obama which expand this problem we need to turn the free so called free trade agreements which are free if you are a corporation but which are incredibly costly if you are a human being we need to train the free trade agreement into fair trade agreements that actually protect workers that protect the environment that protect our

communities and fundamentally this is how we grow our economy through a green new deal which will in fact create the jobs here and put our dollars into creating those jobs right now that at the same time can put a halt to climate change and make wars for oil obsolete so we can get the global economy and the local economy in particular back on track by investing in american jobs and putting a halt to this outsourcing and sending our jobs overseas through the free trade agreements. are just well first of all i think free trade is really a good thing so let's separate free trade from jobs free trade is the notion that goods and services cost less because of competition and who benefits from goods and services costing less you and i as consumers so i'm an absolute advocate of free

trade i think that so much of the criticism of free trade actually ends up to be a criticism of crony capitalism which is alive and well in this country and so much of the criticism of free trade. it has to do with government giving advantages to individuals groups and corporations that are willing to pay for loopholes if you will so when you talk about jobs overseas how about creating a business environment in this country that's going to be inducive to bringing jobs back to this country and that would be reducing the corporate tax rate in this country to zero eliminating corporate tax eliminating income tax abolishing the i.r.s. in this environment in a zero corporate tax rate environment millions of jobs will flock back to the united states because of a zero corporate tax rate environment tens of millions of jobs will get created in

this country because of a zero corporate tax rate environment foreign investment capital which has declined dramatically when i talk about foreign investment capital i'm talking about let's say volvo that wants to expand its operations worldwide are they doing it in the united states absolutely not because of a thirty five percent corporate tax rate environment we need to get back to a corporate tax rate that corporations in this country started out with which was zero there was no corporate tax let's get back to that corporate tax we will see these jobs locked back to the united states as opposed to a decline in foreign investment capital we'll probably see a six fold increase in foreign investment capital if we go to a zero corporate tax rate environment so let's create a business environment in this country most conducive to jobs and it doesn't have to do with government giving out this or that loophole it has to do with government

getting out of the way creating a level system are playing field for everybody and just watch what happens millions of jobs will be created in this country jobs will not be going over. yes a few may have been everybody thank you so it's important to look at where we've actually gone because in fact the corporate tax rate has been reduced markedly over the past several decades following the second world war corporate taxes were a substantial portion of the tax base and they've been cut certainly more than fifty percent more like about eighty percent and what we've actually seen it's important to take stock of where we're going because where we're going is really quite a state of emergency we've gotten to a point now where so much wealth and power taxes on corporations and the wealthy have been slashed more and more money and power has actually concentrated in the

hands of very very few and let me give you the picture of what that looks like if you had one hundred people in the room now representing the american public and you had one hundred loaves of bread representing our total wealth where we've gone now progressively as we've cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations and as the free trade agreements have sent jobs overseas and undermined wages at home here's where we've gotten the top one percent which would be one person in that room of one hundred people now has forty loaves of bread out of the hundred loaves forty belong in the hands of one person now and fifty people in the room who are the worst nourished to start with have all of one loaf of bread to share among them and this is the trend that we've seen unfortunately increasing under this system which is why we call for fair trade agreements we call for living wages we call for reversing this terrible trend in which the top couple percent keep gaining in

wealth ninety two percent of all income gains went to the top one percent in the last four years under barack obama and instead the average wages of workers have. slash so we need to turn that around by restoring the tax rates of the very wealthy and corporations so we have a more equitable economy that to start working for everyone once again. i just have to say that whatever we tax we get less of so in this case we're taxing income so we're getting less income look we've got the second highest corporate tax rate. second highest corporate tax rate in the world that's why jobs are leaving the united states not coming to the united states you've got obama and romney arguing over whether the tax the corporate tax rate should be dropped from twenty seven or twenty five both arguing that this will create more jobs i agree with them

but how about zero how about a limiting corporate tax how about a limiting income tax i am talking about the fair tax it ends up being revenue neutral that we still have to balance the federal budget look i think that if we continue on our spending path in this country that we're going to find ourselves in a monetary collapse so it's twofold we've got to cut federal spending by one point four trillion dollars we enact the fair tax like i say i think tens of millions of jobs get created in this country. obama and. romney are arguing over lowering the corporate tax rate by nibbles let's just get rid of it create a level playing field do away with the i.r.s. imagine no deductions imagine how simplified our lives become not having to comply with i.r.s. regulations and how easy it will be to add minister and collect one

one federal consumption tax. if you buy a bottle that there's second and seven rebuttal ok sure if you. i think that more of what's not working will make it better than shirt go ahead and vote for it but if you think it's kind of broken right now probably more of cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations isn't going to do it for us but here's what has attracted i just interactively we're going on i don't even have to read your story thank you . let's you know let's let's look at what has worked and in fact when you look at the national debt the national debt skyrocketed for a couple of reasons one was wars for oil that were not paid for that were put on sort of the national credit card another is the wall street bailouts another is the tax breaks for the wealthy. and

a big part of what crashed the economy i should mention expanding health care costs and i hope we'll have a chance to come back to that because there is a very good solution for that and in a nutshell that's medicare for all which actually stops the waste the massive wasteful private health insurance bureaucracy and reduces our health care costs by trillions of dollars over the coming decade but also just because we're on the economy now i want to address how the economic collapse brought to us by the deregulation of wall street and the waste fraud and abuse that was perpetrated on the economy that deprived american families of forty percent of their wealth their savings and so on we need to jumpstart that economy and get it going again that's what the green new deal is all about it has a track record of success based on the new deal that profoundly got us out of the great depression and the idea was where the private sector could not and would not

create those jobs that government would step in to create those jobs where needed in order to jumpstart the economy get those revenues going again and help to. race our national deficit and debt. ok moving on to look like it's absolutely blown a tax corporate tax rates have been going up i would just ask the question why not take corporate tax rates to seventy percent why not just take it all the way straight to one hundred percent why should there be corporate profits at all well the answer is that an issue lead this country was about zero corporate tax rate corporations are owned by individuals when when income gets distributed to the owners of corporations as individuals that's where that was taxed that i would argue let's get rid of income tax completely that whatever we tax we get less of and in this case going to have zero corporate tax rate environment is in the

opposite direction of where we've been going which is higher corporate tax rates with which have us with jobs flocking away from the united states as opposing to pay as opposed to being in the united states. so move on to the second question and they are right if they are. now we now we go to matt the second question of reason magazine is going to read a viewer question on the global financial system. the economic collapse in two thousand and eight set off a global economic crisis demonstrating the interconnectedness between distinct national markets we saw this dynamic with this year's libor rate rigging scandal which could have affected hundreds of billions of dollars worth of assets worldwide are you concerned about the size and the lack of checks and balances of the international banking system would you make any reforms to rein in the powers of wall street the federal reserve and the rest of the global financial system. come

in or johnson look i think the reason no i don't think it's an issue of regulation or laws it's the fact that wall street made some incredibly bad decisions that they but should have been rewarded for those decisions by having been allowed to fail and that's what didn't happen in this in this endeavor of mine running for president of states i've surrounded myself with a whole lot of free market economists but to a person say that there would not have been a system wide collapse that we should have a stablish the bottom and again government stepping in has basically blown up assets or inflated assets so we have the federal reserve that is currently buying up assets whatever those might be mortgage backed securities stocks. treasuries i guarantee you that whatever they're buying those those prices right

now are inflated artificially and that they shouldn't be doing this and yet this is exactly what's happening and i do believe that if we don't get our spending in check we're going to find ourselves in a monetary collapse and a monetary collapse very simply. as when the dollars that we have in our pocket don't buy a thing because of the accompanying inflation that goes along with borrowing and printing money to the tune of forty three cents out of every dollar we're spending i am livid over the fact that we bail out wall street for making incredibly bad decisions that they don't go to that they that they don't lose their money that they're allowed to be bailed out now they're too big to fail and we're paying them bonuses and they're reaping profits off of you and i and they're taking no risk whatsoever capitalism on the way up communism on the way down. thank you governor johnson dr jill stein please. yeah you know the the question made the

connection between the collapse of our economy here and the global economic collapse crisis if you will. world over and i think the point is very good that we really need to start with that waste fraud and abuse that took place on wall street and it's important to recognize that that did not come out of nowhere this is a problem that built up over decades as the banks became increasingly powerful. and specifically with the deregulation that was brought on under the clinton administration under the treasury secretary. larry summers in fact who repealed or who advocated and succeeded in revealing the glass steagall act which had separated commercial and investment banks that was put to an end that

was a very important safeguard that was brought to the american people after the last great economic collapse and that happened you know that was what the great depression was all about about the similar waste fraud and abuse on wall street after the great depression those reforms were put in place which protected the economy protected investors protected homeowners for decades until that regulation that safeguard was repealed under the clinton administration and then you had a series of crises culminating in the wall street crash along with that of the under the clinton administration the reckless derivative trading was also established which enabled this problem to blow up. so what happened was that the big banks. undertook something called predatory lending where they actually

targeted vulnerable elders. low income communities of color. poorly educated people they targeted populations that would be vulnerable to these predatory loans they then took those loans and bundled them into fraudulent mortgages and then peddled those mortgages and bet against them this is why we got the collapse that we did this is why it's so critical to reinstate glass steagall to regulate derivatives to break up the big banks which are still too big to fail and too big to jail and. in addition we need to create state banks that will make the loans that provide for those investments that will provide the underpinnings of the green new deal that will bring the jobs back and create a stable and productive and just economy for all of us the economy that we deserve

. and will move on says a third question no rebuttal here. next up mesa journalists and university of southern province ph d. fellow an american studios and ethnicity is going to ask a question of your past on u.s. intervention in the middle east. a viewer wonders both of you have been critics of u.s. intervention around the globe and of called for immediate withdrawal of troops from afghanistan does u.s. influence make the world a more or less safe place and what about women. dr stein great questions thank you well you know we can see where this policy has taken us we deserve a foreign policy based on international law human rights and diplomacy unfortunately we currently have an international policy based on wars for oil and

the use of brute military force as a tool of foreign policy and we see that this is basically blowing up in our faces right now we've seen the blowback all across the middle east with the attacks on the demonstrations against u.s. embassies we've seen in afghanistan where the two thousand soldier recently lost his life that soldier was killed at the hands of an afghan e police force that was being trained by that soldier and we're seeing now many increasing numbers of these deaths where afghanis are turning against americans we've seen recently in pakistan where seventy five percent of pakistanis now identify america actually as an enemy not as a friend after a decade of war and after trillions of dollars over five trillions of dollars spent

thousands of american lives hundreds of thousands of civilian lives perhaps millions what have we accomplished well we don't have stable democracies iraq still teeters on the brink of a civil war we don't have stable allies and again in iraq recently against the expressed wishes of the united states was cooperating with the ran on the use of their airspace for iran to send weapons to syria so we've not created stable allies we certainly have not created a haven for women's rights certainly not in afghanistan not in iraq either. so you know this policy is not working we need to change and i might add that the drone wars which have been so massively expanded under president obama on day three of his presidency he actually intensified the bombing in pakistan.