provocative. my next two guests collaborated on another important work that speaks to the social and economic divide in this country. it s the rich and the rest of us a poverty manifesto. welcome tavis smiley who hosts. and dr. cornell west princeton university. he has written 17 best sellers. gentlemen it is a delight to have you on board. what motivated you to write this? last summer dr. west and i got on a bus and took what we call a poverty tour went to 11 states 18 cities to see what the recession had done to people. po vert is not color coated americans of all races colors and greedz fell into poverty. the numbers tell a story. we realize the slight up tick in the economy like the one we are
the book the rich and the rest us. good to see you here. good to be here. you have been on this poverty tour for some time now. what s been your biggest take away? what have you seen out there in the country? i ll pick up on what mike barnicle was saying in the last segment, that poverty is so extreme now, so deep, no broad, so significant, that a slight uptick in our economy is not going to address the issue of poverty. when one out of two americans is either in or near poverty, 150 million people, the persistent poor, the new poor, the former middle class, the near poor, this is the worst we ve seen in a very long time. and it s no longer not that it ever was it s no longer color coded, jon. we think of poverty, we tend to think whatever reason black and brown. americans of all race, all colors, all creeds. again, one out of every two of us is poor. that s one, you, one, you, one, you. that s how serious this really is. so we saw something that was so dire that people are not
morning. ets it s going to go like that today. also joining us is jeff toobin the cnn senior legal analyst. thank you for joining us and hank of political strategist, iconic political strategist. nice to have you joining us. thank you. lots to get to. the afghan man who hijacked a car and then breached security, drove on to the runway in kabul just as the pentagon chief leon panetta was landing. that man has died. he died from burns he received after he lit himself on fire. we learned that he apparently was trying to run over a group of marines who had assembled to meet the defense secretary. the british soldier was also injured in that incident. leon panetta is in the capital and he s going to be meeting with the afghan president, harmid karzai and that comes days after a u.s. army sergeant apparently went on a violent attack and went door to door in the middle of the night killing 16 afghan civilians and most women and children. this morning, that suspect, a father of t
interesting about football. in the south where do you sit during college football games. you sit in the stands. not a single one have sat in the stands. they sat in the presidential suite. they cannot understand what they are going through. i know newt gingrich is from georgia, so what. mitt romney, i don t know where he lives and santorum is from pittsburgh? what are they going through that the rest of the country is not especially when you look at michigan with a high unemployment rate? that s true. i know a lot of people would like to believe that the south is on its own, but we re in this together. the south lost the war. some of the people i know need to be reminded. we lost. since we lost we always feel like there s a big chip on our shoulder, and that s the plain fact of it. don t forget who did the poverty tour in the south.
smiley show, tavis smiley, and princeton university professor, dr. cornel west. they are co-authors co-hosts, sorry, of the radio show, smiley and west. they went on a poverty tour this summer and are hosting a discussion tonight called remaking america, from poverty to prosperity. thank you both for joining the show. i want to first, dr. west, get your thoughts on mitt romney s comment that issues of income inequality should be discussed in quiet rooms and that this is really all part of an envy-oriented, attack-oriented approach. no, i think that s going to be one of the subject matters that brother tavis is gathering tonight on c-span. we re going to talk about the difference between righteous indignation and envy. working people, poor people, for the most part, do not have envy for rich people. they have righteous indignation, because they re suffering. they re hurting. they re in pain. and when investment bankers were suffering and hurting, they got a bailout. that s called