good evening and welcome to our team national election night coverage. we're coming to you live from washington d.c. fifty seven times this is the fifty seventh time americans have gone to the polls to elect a new president of the united states and this year we choose between president barack obama and mitt romney plus a lot of third party candidates who well they just can't get any respect this election days usually come with a lot of flag waving a lot of patriotism a lot of those i voted stickers and we should be proud of our election that we invented this whole idea of peaceful transitions the government and we continue it

still there should be flag where you waving and there's plenty of it if you look around today but there's also reality now this is the scene in new jersey where americans are casting votes in hurricane shelters surrounded by cots some are even voting in military trucks since their precincts were destroyed it's been one week since hurricane sandy hit sinking american cities like a seaside heights and a growing number of us are wondering if these storms will be more frequent on a hotter planet and also at polling places around the nation new election observers are on site monitoring voters and poll workers to watch out for any alleged voter suppression for the last two years state legislatures and courts around the nation have been battling new voter id laws and new restrictions on voter registration and early voting hours that could affect millions of minority voters across the nation and americans are voting in freeport illinois where local factors closed down just

yesterday laying off one hundred seventy american workers the factory is doing just fine but a decision was made by ownership that a cheap foreign labor would be more profitable. you know since banks crashed the economy in two thousand and eight more than six hundred and sixty thousand americans have lost their jobs in that same way a symptom of deep structural economic problems not to mention the hundreds of thousands of members of our military around the world who voted this year as well as our nation's longest war ever continues in afghanistan. but the point is people are voting and that's a good thing we've gone to the polls fifty seven times in many of those election days were during times of crisis we've elected president stirring a civil war during world war during great depressions amid social upheaval rain snow sunshine we vote for president every four years and that's the beautiful thing about our democracy once every four years the power shifts away from the hands of the government and into the hands of the people to decide the future of the nation and on this election day with so many political social and economic issues at stake

we can afford to cover this election like a horse race like the corporate mainstream news networks do if you want to see that's a bottle going on on election day where the media coverage is that reporters are literally whipping the votes printouts of the polling that monitors hands you can watch them but here we are will be reporting the news that we feel americans need to know on election day artie's america's programming will be broadcast of globally throughout the election coverage tonight so we want to welcome our international audience as well as our viewers right here in the u.s. we have a special short special show planned for you that will take us all the way until the final polling stations have been closed the votes tallied and the two thousand and twelve presidential election called we are going to cover this election in ways that you won't see on other news stations ready all right let's get started.

every election we hear the same things it's the economy stupid so let's kick things off tonight talking about the economy and how much this election will or will not affect our economy and to break it all down for us we're joined by our teams own capital account host laura lester and producer dmitri kofi nutz. thank you so much for joining us so let's start off by talking about how important the comedy is in this election and whether anything is going to change even under president obama or mitt romney lauren i'll start with you well let's see i would say the economy is the most important thing because it kind of all starts with the economy and as we know the u.s. is not in a very good situation in regards to its economy i think as far as the candidates and how much this will really matter i think that many of the issues impacting the u.s.

economy are not ones that you really see these candidates addressing the federal reserve's policies you can't have a healthy economy i would argue and i think to me too would too with the kind of control that the federal reserve is exerting right now on interest rates and in terms of liquidity so that's one issue that we really haven't heard get a lot of play in this presidential election at all the debt and the deficit are major issues and i don't think that either of these candidates have a compelling plan and i say either because obviously they're third party candidates but i guess i'm just kind of making the claim i asked those other people in terms of talking about their mitt romney and barack obama's plan in addition you can't have a healthy economy without a healthy banking system the neither of these guys have taken on wall street are or are likely to be focusing on just broke obama and mitt romney sure there's seems to be a distinction between the two in all contend the president has embraced some sort of deficit reduction he's on board with the idea of cutting spending he's actually cut a lot of spending during the last year and he floated this idea of

a four trillion dollars plan to reduce the deficit but by and large this issue of austerity mitt romney has embraced it and this is a democrat versus republican issue and we have a song for a clip from last night's third party debate which is right here on r.t. and you'll starting your joints and we're battling over us thirty two if we can play that clip there. your clip there but basically take your word for it sanchez agree or jolson say. hey i'm all about austerity or we're going to have a monetary crisis we're just started says well austerity has a track record of not working and if it's going to work in the united states it'll be the first time it's ever worked what is the rule of austerity it is a really the best idea for a nation in a recession to be pursuing austerity let me ask you this what do you mean by austerity i mean austerity can be any number of things that are kind of this blanket term that's become a bad word to make anybody afraid to have any real conversations about what kind of tax policy and spending policy would be most appropriate given the economy and the

role that citizens want their government to have in it so so i think that that would be the first thing i'd want to know ok i think you could be defined in two ways so you could define it as strictly reducing spending to control the deficit or the national debt of spending as austerity well that's one one definition the other is we have to figure out what a government what role government plays in our lives what program should we be cutting under this austerity jonah's so look you could try and reduce the deficit by raising taxes on wealthy people or you can do it by cutting social programs like medicare like medicaid like food stamps it really gets out of the priorities we hold as a nation i think that's up for grabs a little bit in this in this election between barack obama and mitt romney which of those candidates are really reflecting the american ideal he said he didn't see the clip when you said just now and said that started doesn't work. well that's just silly let me explain why that's so i'm not saying that a story works doesn't work what's silly is this notion that exists out there prescribe so that people like paul krugman do as well which is we need to spend

because when you don't spend you have an economic crash look at greece for example they say they're not going to stare at the end of the economy is contracting the g.d.p. is contracting debt is exploding relative to g.d.p. even though they're cutting spending all right so there is really nothing but that's a that's absurd it's absurd why because you're not actually creating sustainable growth how do you get sustainable growth in an economy you have real investment spending is invested in order to create productive capacity that overall after you're done with whatever investment you had fifteen twenty thirty years out you've got more wealth in the kind of you have when you started not simply set spending willy nilly because you know that will increase g.d.p. in the short run but you all you've done is you've expanded your your debt you've increased malinvestment economy maybe you built a shopping mall in the middle of a cornfield all right expecting that retails to fill that out retailers are nowhere to be seen now you've got an empty building all right those workers are no longer working that built it ok and you have a you have with all you've got to the point is you can't grow corn on that field all the people that need that corn that could use that now are starving and you can jump in here in just a second when

a situation in which this private sector is not spending which seems to be our situation now you have corporations sitting on two trillion dollars worth of cash not spending it you have consumers sitting at home free to spend money. isn't the government's role during those times to step in and be the spender or absolute last resort i actually know a little about let me just say that's actually absolutely correct because if you're the employer and spender of last resort what are you doing once again you are creating malinvestment that's not the way you grow an economy by saying let's just spend you will actually create g.d.p. growth for a period of time but that's like saying i'll go to the doctor and i have a lump in my chest and the doctor says it's two things growing and there was a good doctor why don't know are you a teenage girl or are you a four year old woman has a better plan or no i don't because the thing that i would argue is that when it comes down to it republicans and democrats get into office they get into washington in the white house and you have congress to deal with and nobody cut spending you grow spending it doesn't matter if you're a republican a democrat so i don't really care what kind of

a plan you have before you're elected into office i care what you do when you're in it and what we've seen is candidates that don't actually follow through with the proposed cuts that they lay out for romney he's saying cap spending at twenty percent of g.d.p. that's one of them what simpson bowles laid out not something that people like you sam would have called what cap like that cat food or something but anyway my point is that there's a real big difference between what's proposed and what actually gets and acted so i'm hesitant to say that anybody that's propose any kind of spending cuts really has me convinced and on the note of of obama because you mentioned those four trillion dollars in cuts this just shows kind of the mumbo jumbo that goes on in washington because involved in that four trillion dollars plan are things like savings on ending the war in war in afghanistan ok that's not money that you'd like put aside your brain in a rainy day fund to spend on war in afghanistan that's money that would have been deficit spending that now is not it just doesn't make any sense to me and one of the top topics here that we have is talking about jobs let's go ahead and shift the

conversation a little bit to jobs and what we're seeing is that mitt romney and his plan he's saying that he wants to increase in he has a plan to get americans twelve million jobs what a everything that i understand from all the economic analysis. what i've read is that those twelve million jobs are planned anyway and more importantly in order to be able to do any of these things that you guys are talking about you have to be able to get congress on your side so let's talk about whether mitt romney or barack obama's job plan will work and also let's talk about a little bit about congress and if barack obama potentially wins can he get anything done with a republican congress a republican house and what about on the other hand mitt romney let me just say begin i think better suited to discuss some of the political matters but on the face of it it's hypocritical ranges for mitt romney to say that he can create twelve million jobs that goes against everything he's saying he's acting like mr free market and then he's saying we'll create told me jobs he doesn't know how many jobs he's going to create years of so no idea it's an outrageous number but you know what it's political and it feeds into people's desire need to have answers so

here you go thirty seconds you know that's exactly it what i would have said you know the government doesn't create jobs and mitt romney would be the first to say that but then he says oh but my plan is going to create twelve million so i would argue that the government doesn't create jobs but the government can create the kind of circumstances in which businesses can invest want to invest and that you can fuel job growth as to which candidate i just don't i'm not convinced that there would do that yeah i mean i just recently when it comes down to it president obama is asking for a pretty modest tax increase on the rich where it was during clinton levels not at all where it was during the new deal or where it was upwards of ninety percent so really there isn't that much significant difference between the two candidates when it comes to funding. this big got to go to put there are you got to trust loyalists are to be honest with a couple of. economic outlook of today's elections and we'll be talking about these issues thank you very much let's take a short break more election coverage when we come back.

i will fight. that. every single day.

of american power continues. starbucks says a surprising. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything you. don't i'm

sorry is a big. red and welcome back obviously the economy has taken center stage in this campaign cycle and it could in the end be the deciding factor of this election but we can't ignore the wars we can't ignore the dysfunction in our government is congress's record its lowest approval rating ever just percent and we can't ignore this idea that our government is turning on us with its record with its response to grassroots excuse me with its response to grassroots movements like occupy the rise of surveillance and the recently passed national defense authorization act which includes section ten twenty one allowing for the indefinite detention of american

citizens that's right there are serious problems this election day that need more attention so let's talk about them and to do that we're joined now by host of breaking the set abby martin as well as the breaking mess that producer manuel rah polo many joins us from florida hey there manny so you and not me i'm going to go ahead and start off with you since you are in florida let's go ahead and talk about what you're seeing down there and as far as immigration goes let's go that direction parson talk about immigration and sort of the crisis that we're seeing with immigration. i think it's interesting that you bring that up because when we're talking about immigration florida is one of those states where it really doesn't matter obama's got kind of a tough hand that he's being dealt in florida personally i really just from the sense that i get on the ground talking to people here. it could still go either way the latest polls show forty eight percent in favor of obama forty eight percent still in favor of romney so at this point it could still be a toss up but you're asking specifically about immigration well immigration policy

in florida is almost irrelevant seeing as how the largest hispanic communities in florida are cuban cuban immigrants and puerto rican zx that live in the united states and they're absolutely exempt these sort of immigration laws don't really matter to them so florida is one of those states where it's you know it's really tough to kind of get the hispanic vote when your only policy that you're running on as far as your campaign is immigration reform something that people here simply don't don't care about however obama throughout the course of the campaign has had well over two hundred thousand volunteers campaign for him so that could be a real game changer at the end of the day as well so like i said earlier it's a virtual tie here in florida and with twenty nine electoral votes it could still be up in the air at this point one issue that no one is i mean there's been talk of it but congress is not moving at all on immigration at all. is that some absolutely no going i completely agree no i think that this is something that's very important

we've seen rallies about this over and over and over again throughout the last four years and even before that for some sort of immigration policy to come out of the of the obama administration it seemed like there would be some sort of real push for real immigration reform here in this country but we haven't seen it the problem is that both candidates seem to seem to actually be in line with this now the question is will we see this as a result of an obama two point zero presidency or from mitt romney that's the real question to be had but at the end of the day it really almost seems like we're not going to get an answer from either candidate and it's almost the same story with a lot of these issues not only with immigration but with the defense with surveillance with a whole host of other issues but immigration is definitely one of those important issues unfortunately florida's not the kind of state that you could expected. being the deciding factor on the type of immigration policy and many one of the interesting things that we have seen come out of the president obama administration is the dream act in one of the cab yachts is whether those people are if they can

have some type of temporary citizenship if they're willing to fight in war so let's go ahead and switch the conversation to wars since no one else is really talking about them this election and abby i'll go ahead and address this question to you one of the trademarks of the obama administration is his drone campaign why is nobody talking about the drone campaign and only got one or two mentions in the official presidential debates well no one's talking about it because both him and romney as you saw when the question was proposed romney basically just agreed with it is that i absolutely agree with obama's policy on these drone wars the problem with the drone wars people think that they're there surgically precise but what we've seen out of that new report that has come out of the ground in pakistan is that that's absolutely not the case not only do they have ninety eight percent failure rate but they're the leading cause of anti-american sentiment in the region we just saw the foreign minister of pakistan saying the number one reason why people dislike america and that's growing is because of drone suicide bombings have increased over three hundred percent since we started the drone campaign and back and that's just pakistan not to mention the shadow wars in yemen libya of course

we're still using drones in afghanistan so it is a very scary climate when you look at the fact that both are completely in line and we know they're the ones are coming back to the u.s. this far surveillance drones obviously we don't have predator drones flying around not yet ours but go ahead and talk about the surveillance a in the types of things the type of changes that we've seen as far as drone surveillance and other surveillance program well the reason is going to under surveillance if i could interject i'm sorry just completely agree with what abby said but just as an added note it's interesting that a majority of americans actually support be using drones abroad and more than half of americans actually support surveillance drones here in the united states and i think that part of the reason that that's so is that most people just or do they do it when you can support service. drones the u.s. many i think. polling shows that and i'm not saying that i'm one of these american boards surveillance drones but i think that that just shows how detached

a lot of people are from the reality of this the reality that that using drones abroad carry negative consequences in a lot and it builds a negative kind of ideas towards the united states and the fact that more americans don't see that and they're so detached that that's part of the problem and that's why we continue to see that in many i think you're getting at something here and i think this is what this is why the president has expanded this drone warfare program is that optically it looks a lot better than eighty thousand u.s. soldiers stationed in pakistan just have a couple dozen drones flying around in the long run whether or not that's good for our goals in the region or what we want to do when it comes to the quote unquote war on terror that remains to be seen and it might be causing a lot more problems than that then i think abby answered your question for you with that two percent success rate i really don't see that as as achieving any sort of operative objectives when it comes to to war in general though and i want to direct this to you when it comes to war in general both parties have pretty much been on

board with our wars throughout history going all the way back i think the war of eighteen twelve was the most partisan war we've ever fought ever since then it's been pretty much bipartisan support for every war all the way. most recently afghanistan and iraq so is there a problem with both parties when it comes to empire when it comes to trying to expand military influence around the world and do we have to ask ourselves a tough question are we willing to live in a world in which the united states is not the military empire are we comfortable with that idea i'm certainly contrave that that's what i try to advocate a politician got it for that. i think i think yeah sam i think a lot of people you're right i think we're in this false paradigm where we think that we need to manage the empire in different ways yet the democratic party trying to offer to manage the empire in a more humane way where you have nato involved you have these drone bombings which is more humanitarian. and then you have of course the neoconservative hawkish establishment that's trying to just do for you know ground wars and and yeah nation building totally openly unabashed so people are trapped in this false choice where

they think that they need to either manage the empire in certain ways when no one is out there asking the question do we need an empire do we need to be doing these things around the world and certainly i think that a politician can be up there that's why ron paul was so popular his ideas of nonintervention isn't scaling back these grounds i think people see an empire and they see that it's unsustainable having an empire is completely unsustainable when you're looking at the economy and how to manage the resources in this country it will always fall especially the arrogance money going to church in the french and the british for what love can be like post and prior. and also because we do know that that the economy back during world war two really rebounded when when a war was happening if they had more manufacturing people were more active and so there's been arguments that maybe this war economy can get us back on track but that's not what we've seen over the past ten years right manning. look at look at

world war two you just mentioned world war two world war two was an escalation of the first of all it was not a war of aggression the united states was drawn into world war two it was helping its allies in europe the war was paid for in war bonds the united states is involved itself into large scale wars afghanistan the largest war in u.s. history is pretty much bankrupted this country and the largest fall city here the biggest illusion that we're faced with this is if americans when we've got a curtain pulled over our eyes making us think that we have two choices one choice that we have a really big military we're going to continue wars and another choice where we have an even bigger military and we're still going to continue the wars and abby brought the case of ron paul and that's another i mean ron paul's a very excellent example of how we do have options in this country the thing is. but we have other options that are not you know just ron paul we have other parties in this country that are viable parties and as long as we continue to exclude them from the debate that we're going to continue this system where we think that we

have options and we really really don't well man i'm sorry man i had a i had a great point when i was bringing up world war two i mean but think about world war two we get we were all rallying together as a country to you know conserving rubber having these victory gardens now when we have a war it's like go shop i mean the mentality is completely different we're not rallying together as a country and when there was action of a judgment threat that people could argue for in world war two now it's just this threat that the manufactured this is sustain our work to me that is not sustainable we sort of made a deal with the gods of war here to depend our economy on war but it seems like we could instead of building tanks we could you know reinvent our energy grid and make more efficient housing and buildings and stuff like fifteen seconds left few hours ago the only people are talking about their third party candidates is a third party candidate worth voting knowing they can't win we just have fifteen seconds left vote absolutely because i think that as you know articulated that we should have you boys in our opposition against a mandate for and less war the surveillance in

a police state here at home and if we vote for the two party establishment that's the mandate that look at it and you many republicans. concur all i have to. that's a. thank you ma'am and. i we're going to be live tweeting throughout the night or at least trying to i've got my phone here somewhere. here so send us your comments and they might end up in tonight's coverage you can follow me at sam sachs or you can follow me at meghan underscore lopez as always we'll do our best to respond and less lighten the mood a little bit throughout this election season the candidates have done their very best to present the issues as well as their plan of action for how to deal with them but there have been some lighter times on the campaign trail as well so we've put together a top ten list for some of our most ridiculous moments coming out of this election here's number ten. four.

by the end of my research i'm term. we will have the first permanent race on the moon and it will be american. you know about that i don't want to run on nuclear age but you know i'm kind of a fan of move colonies i think we should be investing more in exploring space exploring space instead of cutting nasa budget we i mean this is what we did in the in the one nine hundred sixty s. it was a rallying call for the nation. you know we encourage a whole new generation of scientists we got a bunch of new technology and i don't think that was a crazy idea and i think you know i think people got too mad about newt gingrich but whatever action coverage there i'm sam sachs and i'm making lopez for the latest election information or to find out what else is going on in the world behind beyond us elections check out our website it's r t dot com slash usa or

check out our youtube page that's youtube dot com slash r t america will see you right back here at five pm eastern. i will. post it on.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about what he says are all are you know what that is my self right now i want to give us a defeat terrorism the only liberal the christian. can secure beliefs about it's just a. close call for you to distract us from what you.