suburban city of nevada officially living in a dissasser zone. not because of a storm or wildfire or any of the usual reasons. it is because of the city s financial troubles. william la jeunesse live on the story in our west coast newsroom. financial disaster zone, william. reporter: martha, think of yourself as a city. you have these locked in salary increases in the new contracts. you have a soaring pension costs and no money because you have a disappearing tax base. you like to declare bankruptcy but state law says you can t. north las vegas found a loophole and declared itself a disaster area. from fire to floods this summer saw its share of disasters but in north las vegas residents know the state of emergency there has nothing to do with the weather. we need to stop spending money. our biggest issue is salaries and compensation and benefits. reporter: unable to declare bankruptcy, the city is using a state law on disasters to declare an emergency. they re claiming a fin
who hasn t granted favors to bundlers. that is the last vest taj of a rea a real sco u.n. dral, this president runs the whoupbs with the same kind of swarmn police fee as the people in chicago. martha: talk to me about the comments about entrepreneurship, and you didn t build it on your own. do you think the romney campaign has done a good enough job of coming out with their own take on that statement? it happened two days ago. let s be fair in terms of timing. we certainly have been talking about it a lot. as you folks pointed out, the only people that seem to cover the comments are your station. the rest of the media seems to ignore it. but the important thing about what the president said again is that he believes it. the fact that he believes it shows that this guy doesn t understand how to create jobs.
martha: back to the election right now. governor romney s campaign stepping up their offensive against president obama repeatedly accusing the president of being a quote, crony capitalist, who gives federal handouts to his top supporters. hear is the latest attack. take a look. so while middle class americans are suffering in the obama economy president obama s donors and supporters are doing well. if you re a middle class worker, you re facing the prospect of layoffs. if you re an obama contributor, you re facing the benefit of payoffs or benefiting from payoffs. martha: that was ed gillespie in that voice there. bob beckel joins me, former democratic campaign manager. andrea tanteros, daily news columnist. both are co-host of the fabulous the 5:00. bob, do you think this is useful candidate for the romney campaign. when heard crony
weapons and use them against his own people. martha: that is exactly the fear, that he is feeling corn earned at this point. russian officials have had discussions with the opposition to bashar al-assad, that would make him feel a bit cornered and abandoned. there is also a discussion of a al-qaida connection to all of this. leland. reporter: absolutely. and what this ambassador this, defect eris saying right now is that the regime has con fired with al-qaida for a number of the large car bombings all around syria, although that seems unusual, because for a longtime al-qaida has tried to target the bashar al-assad regime and take them down. we are seeing the syrian free army seen fighting in these videos starting to become a little bit better organized, a little bit better armed, and the big question going forward are the latest accusations about chemical weapons and about al-qaida, whether they are true or not, will they inspire the united states, nato or perhaps even russia who you
think about it, martha. if we had a dynamic, robust economy you would have some inflation. we have no inflation. that implies we do not have a growing, dynamic robust economy. in fact we have an economy that is dead flat if you look at all the most recent indicators. maybe we have growth of one, 1 1/2%. that is very weak performance. martha: we talk so much about the unemployment numbers but we need to focus on the growth numbers as well as you point out which are very, very weak. sure. martha: ben bernanke will be looking at the growth numbers as he does every day in his office as he pours over this data. what do you expect we ll hear from the fed chairman today, stuart? you have to read between the lines. he may hint that he will print some more money and try to stimulate the economy. maybe he will hint that he will do this in the future. but really it s an open question, nobody knows exactly what he is going to say. but he will have to respond to a clearly slowing economy. i don