Amy Goodman: Are We Ignoring Obama's Record?

Amy Goodman: We're joined by two guests who have worked diligently to get poverty back on the national agenda. Dr. Cornel West is with us, professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Princeton University. He's a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, and co host of the radio show Smiley & Tavis, Smiley & West with Tavis Smiley. Together they've written the newbook,The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto. Tavis Smiley is a TV, radio broadcaster, philanthropist, New York Times bestselling author. He hosts the PBS show Tavis Smiley and two radio shows, The Tavis Smiley Show on NPR and Smiley & West, with Cornel West. So we're right here in the president's city. In fact, he just flew out of Washington after his re election. Cornel West, the figures, who is ahead? Who isn't? As your book is titled The Rich and the Rest of Us. Cornel West: Well, one, I think that it's morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion, poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall, dealing with stagnating and declining wages, when profits are still up, and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems, ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it's very sad. I mean, I'm glad there was not a climate change, global warming.