. >> i'm tom styer. each week, we take a look at the keystone pipeline proposal. >> he believes the pipeline will escalate the production of the controversial canadian oil sands. >> the question here was, is this a chance to change our trajectory in terms of energy? is this a chance to change the way people think about it and the way the policies are shaped around energy? >> we caught up with steyer in the tiny town of mayflower, arkansas, where he was getting a look at the cleanup site from an estimated 5 billion barrel oil spill. >> here is some just off the top of the water. it's sticky. it's extremely sticky. >> very sticky. >> it smells awful. >> in march 2013, a shallow underground pipeline owned by exxonmobil burst, sending oil running down a mayflower residential street, as can be seen in this video. >> the smell is unbelievable. i mean, look. there's oil. >> the oil flowed down the street through a drainage ditch and emptied into a marshy area. the crews had come from alberta, canada, thousands

well, tom styer, who apposes the -- opposes the keystone pipeline. runs ads.changed his position in the last two years on the keystone pipeline and styer has run $2.6 million of negative ads against joany earnst which is a lot of money in the iowa media market. >> fox poll is tied at 31%. rasmussen poll is tied at 42%. marah, your choice. >> i pick north carolina. the democrats have to hang on to north carolina. if they lose arkansas, alaska, and louisiana, in addition to the three open seats, they have got to hang on to north carolina and get one other seat. the interesting thing about north carolina unlike other states it's truly purple. barack obama won it in 2008, narrowly lost it in 2012. and the democrats have spent tremendous amount of time and money building an infrastructure to get out the vote there and i think north carolina will be a greatest of the vaunted democratic field operation to see if they can get all those newcomers to north carolina educated, young, up scale whites and african-americans to the polls. the polls there are very close. i thi

tom styer is one of the less known of the politically active billionaires but he pledged a hundred million to raise public aware ness about the climate change. in researching this i realized it isn't just america. it is a global development. billionaires have run for office in 12 countries around the world and most of the time they end up winning. the most famous is a county in italy but we have the case of the new president of ukraine now. the political activism of these and other billionaires raises question about excessive political interest, conflict of interest. we are seeing the wealthification of politics in society at many different levels. i wanted to look at the political impact of this. there are 1650 billionaires and 492 live in the united states. is important to understand the impact they have on the political process. there are several aspects i think are important in terms of the context in which this activism is taking place. one is the high level of income concentration we are seeing. it shows the rise between 1913 and 2012. it reached a high among the top 1% in terms of t

yes like george soros ambling got him one vote on crowd that hans dyer or another one are sounds tom styer owns loads of them not a big billionaire how do you not even get close to yes i am they have billions three hundred look we can debate forever obama on who's getting the more billionaire money but what i think most saturdays want what more was most americans don't want is they want actual solutions that i think debating on who is being owned by who is not going to the real solution we people want more going back to the minimum wage thing we need to make sure that more people are getting these jobs that can give them what a living wage to help with the income inequality and i think almost so we get kind of sidetracked by these issues of who's getting more billion our money if they're being paid to constantly slash minimum wage to make sure that when he went on wage ever been. ok with that in the way everyone has a question and i say it is really minimal. relative to inflation that's not right slash right but he made ok so therefore he hasn't risen along with the rest of you quite a bit

. >> that money coming from billionaire environmental activist tom styer. >> he put in a lot of money against you. >> yes, he did. >> insley has held a series of meetings across the state highlighting environmental issues pledging to dramatically cut carbon emissions. he has met with styer to discuss climate change and local political races. republicans hold a one seat voting edge in a tenuous coalition with democrats who have jumped the aisle. he and his pack contributed more than half a million dollars, huge for such a race. >> do you welcome that help? >> you bet. i welcome anybody who's an optimist and an activist. i think mr. styer is both. >> it's happening at the state level, even in local he elections. >> peter at the non-partisan national institute on money and state politics said the amount of outside money flowing to local raises has jumped since the 2010 citizens united supreme court ruling, wimp loosened restrictions on independent spending. >> if you're trying to affect policy change, sometimes the approach is more efficient and those raises are less expensive in general