PARK AVENUE: MONEY, POWER, AND THE AMERICAN DREAM OCT 5 2012

BBC CUT

Track Transcript
01:00:37:22 Narrator: This stretch of Park Avenue on the Upper East Side
of Manhattan is the wealthiest neighborhood in New York
City. This is where the people at the top of the ladder live.
The upper crust. The ultra rich. But this street is about a lot
more than money. It’s about political power. The rich here
haven’t just used their money to buy fancy cars, private jets
and mansions. They’ve also used it to rig the game in their
favor. Over the last 30 years, they’ve enjoyed unprecedented
prosperity from a system that they increasingly control. But
if you head north for about ten minutes this Park Avenue
comes to an end at the Harlem River. On the other side of the
water, there is another Park Avenue. This is the South Bronx,
home to America’s poorest congressional district. There are
700,000 people in this district. Almost forty percent of them
live in poverty, making less than 40 dollars a day.
From here the last thirty years have looked very different
than the view from Manhattan’s Park Avenue. People here
have seen their wages fall and the cost of almost everything
else go through the roof. They’ve lost their jobs in the
recession caused by bankers across the river. They’ve
watched their children struggle in failing schools. And
they’ve ended up even worse off than they were a generation
ago.

Man on street dressed as hundred-dollar bill: Get that

money. Get that money) but America is still a land of
opportunity isn’t it? A place where anyone can make it to the
top if they were willing to work hard and set their sights
high. That’s what makes this country great. Isn’t that what
we tell ourselves? But in today’s America what are the
chances that someone who starts their life on this Park

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 Avenue will end up living on this Park Avenue?

01:02:40:05 Title: Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream

01:02:52:07 Paul Piff: Let’s imagine that you’re invited to a game of monopoly
and you arrive at this game to find out that all of the properties
have been divided up, all of the money has already been handed
out but you’re told, “Hey, go ahead and sit down. Play the game.
We’re going to give you a chance to play just like everyone
else.” There are some in society that have a lot of access, a lot
of social mobility, a lot of resources to do the things that they
want. As opposed to other people who are more disadvantaged,
more underprivileged don’t have the same levels of resources but
are still…

01:03:29:05 Narrator: Paul Piff is a social psychologist at the University

of California, Berkeley who studies the psychology of wealth
and the consequences of inequality in our society. We came
upon an experiment he conducted that caught our interest.

01:03:47:12 Player 3 : Oh wait, I get 200 bucks.

01:03:49:11 Player 4: Oh yeah.

01:03:50:06 Narrator: Monopoly first became a hit during the Great

Depression. It’s a game of ruthless, dog eat dog capitalism.
True to the American Dream, everyone has an equal
opportunity, starting with the same amount of money and the
same chance to succeed. Winning is a mix of luck and skill.
For his experiment, Piff rigged the game by giving one player
a huge advantage.

01:04:14:15 Paul Piff: So there are two players, they don’t know each other.
You flip a coin to determine your position. So it’s random. Almost
like your emergence into the world is random. Whether you land
in this family or this other family. If you were the rich person you
got a lot more money. You got two times as much money. When
you passed go you collect $200, you would get to roll both dice
so you are allowed to move around the board quicker.

01:04:39:19 Player 1: How many five hundreds did you have?

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01:04:41:14 Player 2: Just one

01:04:42:11 Player 1: Are you serious? (Player 2: yeah) I have three. (laughs)

01:04:45:13 Paul Piff: Now if you are on the low end, we really hit you hard.
You got half the money, when you passed go you collected half
the salary, (Player 2: I’m going to lose pretty soon.) you only got
to roll 1 die, so you’re moving around the board very very slowly
as the other person is just wizzing around you collecting 200
dollars every couple of turns.

01:05:04:09 Player 3: I’m getting another two hundred dollars I guess.

01:05:06:09 Player 4: I know.

01:05:08:02 Narrator: Even in a game that’s openly rigged, the rich

players inevitably exhibit a sense of entitlement. They
gobble up more of the carefully placed pretzels. They come
to believe that they deserve to win.

01:05:21:16 Player 3: I’m going to buy out this whole board.

01:05:24:21 Narrator: And they showed no concern for the misfortune of

the poor players, even though the poor players don’t stand
the slightest chance of winning.

01:05:32:07 Player 1: You’re gonna lose all your money soon.

01:05:35:03 Paul Piff: The idea of the American dream is that every one’s got
an equal opportunity. You’ve just gotta decide to play. But in fact,
there are large groups of people that experience the game as
unfair. The opportunity’s not there. All the rules have been
decided. The property’s already been bought up and the money
is already in the hands of the other players.

01:06:01:00 Kids: Woo! You rebound. Wo Ho! Oh! I’m Michael Jordan. Aight
Aight I’m Kobe. I’m Kobe I am Ray Allen. I’m Ray Allen.

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01:06:08:14 Anne Rueth: Almost all families start out with wanting the same
things for their children. They want them to be safe. They want
them to be happy and they want them to be successful and
healthy. But even before birth so many kids start that race behind.
They come into a neighborhood that’s unsafe, maybe they are in
a overcrowded apartment. They don’t have healthy nutrition.
They might have medical issues that aren’t being addressed. And
I would say their number one challenge is just a lack of
opportunities in general.

01:06:43:14 Narrator: In parts of the South Bronx, unemployment has

reached 19%, and many families struggle just to put food on
the table. Pastor Colin Dunkley and his wife April run a food
pantry in the South Bronx. It feeds about 200 struggling
families every week.

01:07:01:02 Colin Dunkley: I like helping people. I like serving the people. I
like helping the people. If there’s something we can do to bless
them that’s what we’re gonna do.

01:07:10:11 April Dunkley: You typically get the vegetables in the can, beans
in the can, bags of rice. Sometimes we get the get the little sippy
Capri Sun juices. We’ll put those in the bag for the kids.

01:07:20:10 Narrator: But they don’t have nearly enough to meet the
demand. When we visited, they ran out of food in 15 minutes.

01:07:27:05 April Dunkley: No more comida! Nada! No more! There is no

more food at this time. You can come back next Monday at 2
o’clock. (To woman on line) That’s it, mommy, that’s it. (To man
on line) No sir, I’m sorry. No more.

01:07:42:07 Tim Noah: It is very, very hard to pull yourself out of extreme
poverty in the United States. It almost never happens. This runs
completely counter to what people’s notion of America has been
for a very long time. We think of ourselves as the land of
opportunity. Mobility in the United States lags most other
advanced industrial democracies. (TITLE: Upward Mobility of
Developed Nations: Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada,
Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, Spain,
France, Switzerland, United States)

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01:08:06:01 Jeffrey Sachs: When I was growing up, the image of America, the
self-image, was of a vast middle class country. Of course, there
was a small rich group and there were some poor, but America
prided itself and understood that its health was because of a vast
middle class. We’re not that kind of society anymore.

01:08:30:07 Narrator: There’s always been a gap between the wealthiest

in our society and everyone else but in the last 30 years
something changed. That gap became the Grand Canyon.

[Graph: 2428: Income inequality between the top 1% and the

bottom 99%]

01:08:45:01 Bruce Bartlett: The incomes of people at the lower end stagnated.
And, and disproportionate amount of the, the growth in the
economy has accrued to those at the upper end.

01:08:57:00 Narrator: This is what America’s economic pie looked like in

the decades after World War II. Income gains were shared by
everyone, with big portions going to average Americans. But
since the late 1970s the bottom 90% have seen their share of
the pie completely devoured by the top 1%.

[Graph: 2468: America’s economic pie looked like in the decades

after World War II (01:08:44:21)

Graph: 2465: America’s economic pie since the late 1970s

(01:08:53:16)]

01:09:17:06 Bruce Bartlett: The wealthy are getting an enormous percentage

of all of the gains in the entire economy. When I talk about the
wealthy I’m talking about, like in the thousands of people

01:09:28:07 Narrator: Thousands might be over stating it. As of 2010,

only 400 of the richest Americans controlled more wealth
than the bottom half of American households. That’s 150
million people. The question is what are the people at the top
going to do with all that money?

01:09:48:12 Michael Gross: There is a little tiny group and it’s probably 1% of
the 1%. Those people are concentrated in a very small number of
places. New York has been one of those places since the early

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 19 century. It has been a world city with world-class fortunes and
th

it has been a magnet for people who live in the 1% of the 1%. I
was in a taxi going down Fifth Avenue looking for the richest
apartment building in New York and there were about ten
buildings that were on the initial list. 740 Park became the
epicenter for people who ruled the world. Truly the masters of the
universe. They all lived at 740 Park.

01:10:37:24 Title: 740 Park Avenue in Manhattan is home to more billionaires

than any other building in the United States.

01:11:05:27 Michael Gross (Mixed VO and interview): It was known before my

book as the Rockefeller building but in fact Rockefeller was not
one of the original people in the building. It was built by Jackie
Kennedy’s grandfather James T Lee in a consortium with a group
of the people who were considered to be responsible for the
market crash of 1929 and the depression that followed. And then
it became kind of the Standard Oil building. It was the building
where lots of Standard Oil executives and their friends all lived. It
was truly considered the holy grail for a certain kind of wealthy
New Yorker. Now the largest category in 740 Park are hedge fund
guys, and they’re the people with the most money now. They are
the equivalent of the oil people from the 30s.

01:11:50:21 New York City Doorman (Formerly at 740 Park Avenue):

These guys rule the world, you know. They are multi-
billionaires of, CEOs of the major corporations of the world.

Narrator: This doorman once worked at 740 Park Avenue. He

01:11:59:19 agreed to be interviewed, under the condition that we hide
his face and alter his voice.

01:12:09:09 Former Doorman (740 Park Avenue): To work at 740 you really
need to know somebody within the business. You know, you’re
working at the top building in the world. It’s only 31 units, it’s not a
lot of residents but they’re high-tempered and, you know, you
have to have thick skin to work there. You’re going to be dealing
with detestable people and you’re going to be dealing with
billionaires. You need to know everything about the residents—
what time they wake up to go down to Wall Street, whose car is
which, who likes to get their own door, who gets in the passenger
seat, who gets in the back seat. You know, these things don’t
seem like a big thing to me and you but even a minor mishap and

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 you’ll be fired straight away.

01:12:54:09 Title (and VO): Who are some of the key tenants in the
building now?

01:12:57:03 Michael Gross: You’ve got John Thain; the CEO who presided
over the downfall of Merrill Lynch. Ezra Merkin, who was the
feeder to Bernie Madoff; David Koch, who is the richest person in
the building; and of course, Steve Schwarzman, the poster child
of capitalistic greed in the last 10 years.

01:13:16:23 Narrator: Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, one of the kings

of private equity, lives in 740 Park’s most extravagant
apartment. Schwarzman was a managing director at Lehman
Bothers before co-founding the Blackstone Group. He is
one of the most prominent CEOs when it comes to lobbying
for tax policies that favor the ultra rich.

01:13:36:25 Former Doorman (740 Park Avenue): He was a strange guy, Mr.
Schwarzman.

01:13:40:01 Stephen Schwarzman: Thank you for the opportunity to address

the 66 annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. We
th

call it Occupy Waldorf.

01:13:51:03 Former Doorman (740 Park Avenue): He seemed to be out of the

public eye, but then these little spurts where he’d have his 60
th

birthday party, he had Rod Stewart play and it was all over the
papers. And he had a replica of his apartment built in this hotel
and it was just completely ridiculous. He’d have his annual
Christmas party and he’d have 25 Christmas trees come in, these
massive Christmas trees. Yeah. I mean every room would get a
Christmas tree and be fully decorated.

01:14:21:25 Michael Gross: Schwarzman lives in the apartment that had

previously been owned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. It’s a sprawling
apartment. It’s 37 rooms. Lavish beyond your wildest imagining.
20,000 square feet.

01:14:37:16 Narrator: Schwarzman paid just under 30 million dollars for

this apartment. Pocket change for a Wall Street Tycoon
worth over five billion.

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 Title: $5,000,000,000 (01:14:29:13)

01:14:46:27 Alex Gibney: If a few people do really well, why is that such a big
deal? Isn’t that just proof of the American dream, you work hard,
and you’re successful?

01:14:55:06 Jacob Hacker: We as a society have very complex views about

economic inequality. Americans are not of the view that all
inequalities of wealth or incomes are unjust. In fact they think if
you work harder, if you seize opportunities, then you should be
able to get ahead.

01:15:11:01 Narrator: Jacob Hacker is a political scientist at Yale, and the

co-author of ‘Winner-Take-All Politics,’ which argues that
this extraordinary accumulation of wealth at the top isn’t just
about hard work. It’s about the wealthy interests using the
political system to rig the rules in their favor.

01:15:27:14 Jacob Hacker: There’s been a reinforcing cycle. Those at the top
have done well. They’ve invested in policies that are favorable to
them, and they’ve done even better, and then they’ve churned a
lot of that money back into politics.

01:15:41:03 Narrator: To understand how big money rigs the rules in

Washington, we sought out the poster child for political
corruption: former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Having pled
guilty to charges including conspiracy to bribe public
officials, Abramoff spent nearly four years in federal prison.
Now released, he is touring the country trying to promote
reform.

01:16:02:26 Jack Abramoff: I wish I could tell you that in the midst of all of my
lobbying activity I came to an epiphany, but I didn’t. It
unfortunately for me required my demise.

01:16:12:15 News Reporter: Abramoff has plead guilty to federal corruption

charges.

01:16:16:11 Jack Abramoff: But eventually, I decided to look honestly at the

past activities I had engaged in. I also systemically looked at the

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 overall picture. And realized that the system itself was really badly
in disrepair. The lobbyists will bring in the exact draft of what they
want because they want to make it sure it is exactly what they
need. You know, the staff are busy, the congressman busy, and
so they frequently in the past, and still, avail themselves of the
services, let’s call them, from the lobbyists to write these bills.

01:16:51:12 Alex Gibney: Now as a lobbyist, what was your leverage in terms
of getting members to sponsor the bills that you had written?

01:16:56:23 Jack Abramoff: A lobbyist needs to get to the decision maker, the
congressman and the staff and that involves unfortunately
financial conveyances.

01:17:06:05 Title Card: He means money.

01:17:08:10 Robert Kaiser: One of the dirty little secrets in Washington today
is how much time members of the House and Senate spend
every week, not just in the elections season, but all the time,
year-round, on the telephone, asking people for money. It’s
begging for money. It’s a sad spectacle.

01:17:25:10 Jack Abramoff: When you have campaigns that are costing tens
of millions of dollars, the people who have the money want
something back. Money is being used to buy results. That is the
problem. That’s how I used money. I know what I was doing.

01:17:39:03 Jeffrey Sachs: Washington is almost owned and operated by the

US corporate sector at this point. There are so many billions of
dollars of spending on lobbying, there are so many lobbyists that
are in the room, writing the regs, writing the laws right now, there
is so much financing of political campaigns, there are so many
bought politicians.

01:18:03:15 Narrator: Our civics books tell us that the President is the
most powerful person in the world and that special interests
must go to Washington to petition the government. But when
it comes time to raise money, our presidents go hat in hand
to the people who really have the power. In 2007, President
George W. Bush made a pilgrimage to Steve Schwarzman’s
apartment to ask for money for the Republican National
Committee

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01:18:29:15 Doorman: The secret service were coming for I would say 3-4
months before the actual visit. And they would come every week
just to check up, look around the building, they did background
checks on us for sure. They had the sharp shooters out. They
brought Mr. Bush to Mr. Schwarzman’s apartment, he spent
maybe 15 minutes, out and that’s it.

01:18:50:16 Title: George W. Bush raised 1.2 million dollars in fifteen minutes
at Steve Schwarzman’s fundraiser.

01:18:55:22 Michael Gross: Why did John Dillinger rob banks? That’s where
the money is. Well 740 Park is where the money is and in this
day and age, any candidate who didn’t go to 740 Park would
probably be foolish.

01:19:07:05 Mitt Romney: I’m Mitt Romney, I believe in America and I’m
running for president of the United States.

01:19:13:14 ABC anchor: Romney has a private meeting on Park Avenue with
prominent CEOs eager for change in Washington

01:19:20:05 Michael Gross: Mitt Romney went to kiss Mr. Schwarzman’s ring
and meet some of his friends and no doubt collect a few checks.

01:19:26:01 Bloomberg Interviewer: What makes him good for the country?

01:19:28:05 Steve Schwarzman: Mitt, he’s a natural leader, and he’s

accessible. He listens to what you say.

01:19:35:12 Bloomberg Interviewer: And what are you telling him about what
needs to be done?

01:19:37:27 Steve Schwarzman: Uh well, we had a nice meeting about three

weeks ago for an hour and what I tell him stays with me but uh--

01:19:47:02 Bloomberg Interviewer: OK, fair enough.

01:19:48:07 Steve Schwarzman: I’m not shy.

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01:19:50:14 Jacob Hacker: They can influence the writing of laws, the
implementation of regulation, the degree to which the tax code
tilts towards business and those at the top versus ordinary
working Americans.

01:20:01:25 Narrator: A perfect example of the influence that a small

group of billionaires can have on the government is
something in the tax code called the carried interest
provision. It allows hedge fund and private equity managers
like Steve Schwarzman to pay a fifteen percent tax rate on
their income even though, unlike normal capital gains,
they’re not required to use their own money.

01:20:22:23 Jacob Hacker: When it’s explained to people, they think it’s crazy.
The most highly paid financial executives get taxed at a rate
lower than your mom and pop grocery. It is in the tax code
because of the incredibly effective lobbying of the financial
industry.

01:20:40:16 Steve Schwarzman: Okay, it was a question about carried

interest being taxed at a lower rate. We sort of look at this as a,
as sort of an issue that’s now in the political world, and it will be
solved in that world. We don’t have much of a say in that.

01:21:00:13 Bloomberg Anchor: Schwarzman went to capitol hill yesterday

and stood outside the senate chamber lobbying senators.
Schwarzman was there to fight against higher taxes on so-called
carried interest.

01:21:10:14 Jacob Hacker: From 2006 on, every democratic leader and
president, in the case of president Obama, has said “we’re gonna
get rid of this.”

01:21:18:16 Barack Obama: Let’s ask hedge fund managers to stop paying
taxes that are lower on their rates than their secretaries.

01:21:24:27 Jacob Hacker: And then magically it manages to survive. Before

you know it, the congressional session has ended and ‘Oh my
God, we ran out of time. We didn’t get to it; we’ll do it next time.’

01:21:33:08 News Anchor: It appears the democrats have completed their

take over of capitol hill.

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01:21:37:02 Narrator: Even when the democrats controlled both houses
of Congress, they couldn’t close the carried interest
loophole. The question is why?

01:21:45:14 Robert Kaiser: It passed the house, twice! But in the senate, the
hedge funds had a pal in Charles Schumer of New York. The
senator from Wall Street, as he was known for many years.

01:21:56:00 Narrator: Charles Schumer is one of the most powerful

senators in the country and has raised more campaign
money from the financial industry than any other democrat
currently serving in Congress.

01:22:05:22 Jacob Hacker: Schumer became famous for his ability to gain
wall street dollars. That’s why he was elevated within the
democratic leadership. It was because he was such an effective
fundraiser.

01:22:15:02 Robert Kaiser: Schumer in that period was the chairman of the
Senate democratic campaign committee, which, you gotta give
the guy credit, he turned this into an absolute money machine.

01:22:26:07 Narrator: Schumer helped the democratic party raise record

amounts from Wall Street. And in June 2007, as the senate
was considering legislation to close the carried interest
loophole, Schumer went on a fundraising frenzy. In that one
month, he raised more than 1 million dollars from hedge
funds and private equity firms like Blackstone. The carried
interest bill never saw the light of day.

01:22:49:07 Robert Kaiser: Schumer just buried the idea. It never came up for
a vote in a committee or on the floor of the Senate. It just
disappeared.

01:22:56:14 Jacob Hacker: And that I think is a perfect example of the way in
which money talks in American politics today.

01:23:05:01 Narrator: And nobody’s money talks louder than David

Koch’s. This right wing oil tycoon with a fortune of twenty-
five billion dollars (Title: $25,000,000,000) is the richest
resident of 740 Park Avenue. David and his brother Charles
run Koch Industries, one of the largest privately owned

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 companies in the world. They make things like Dixie Cups,
Brawny paper towels, Lycra, and Stainmaster Carpet. But
their most profitable business is oil and gas, which helps
Koch Industries bring in over one hundred billion dollar in
annual revenues (Title: $100,000,000,000). Together, the Koch
brothers may have spent more money to influence American
politics than anyone else in the country.

01:23:43:29 Jane Mayer: They basically are unprecedented; they influence

American politics on a completely different dimension than
anybody else.

01:23:52:22 Title: $2,535,750 to the Cato Institute

01:23:55:11 Title: $2,000,000 to Republican Governor’s Association

01:23:57:18 Title: $6,000,000 to Americans for Prosperity
Title: $3,770,909 to Bill of Rights Institute

01:24:01:24 Justin Elliott (TV Interview Clip): Millions of dollars to Republican

politicians.

1:24:03:17 Peter Cook (Bloomberg Newscast): More than 15 million dollars,

for example, to lobby in Washington since 2006.

01:24:08:08 Title: $4,000,000 to The Heritage Foundation

$1,600,000 to Federalist Society
$3,800,000 to Bill of Rights Institute
$1,575,000 to Foundation for Individual Rights
$9,074,500 to Mercatus Center
(etc. rest are unreadable)

01:24:14:22 Up with Chris Hayes (Newscast): As much as 200 million dollars

of their own money this year to help defeat President Obama.

1:24:18:29 Title: Koch money gone to over half of the current House of
Representatives and Senate.

01:24:33:01 Jane Mayer: In 1980, David Koch actually ran for Vice President
on the Libertarian ticket.

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01:24:38:06 Unknown NBC Newscaster: They count on growing sympathy for
their party’s single goal—freedom from government.

01:24:43:19 Jane Mayer: He did abysmally. The libertarian ticket got one
percent of the vote in America in 1980. What they learned from
that is that they had to figure out another way to get their ideas to
become influential.

01:24:56:15 Narrator: So the Koch’s decided to use their money to

advance their agenda. They gave generously to political
candidates, but more importantly they invested heavily in
groups that could bring their anti-government ideas into the
mainstream. The brothers gave millions to right wing think
tanks and Charles even founded one—the libertarian Cato
Institute.

01:25:17:04 Cato Institute (Daniel J. Mitchell): Government’s too big, and it’s
getting bigger, and we don’t want to encourage bigger
government. Take the keys to the liquor cabinet away from the
alcoholics.

01:25:24:28 Narrator: The Koch’s also wrote out enormous checks to

universities to support programs that would promote
deregulation and free market economics.

01:25:32:23 Jane Mayer: Their free-market ideology, they argue, is just about
principle. But there are many, many areas in which their business
interests butt into regulations.

01:25:45:03 Narrator: Environmental regulations have been especially

bad for the Koch’s bottom line, and they’ve been slapped
with numerous fines from the Environmental Protection
Agency.

01:25:25:54 Carol Browner: [Title: Carol Browner, EPA Administrator (1993-

2001)] We are talking about millions of gallons crude oil being
released into the environment.

01:26:00:00 Narrator: In 2000, Koch Industries had to pay a 30 million

dollar fine for it’s role in over 300 oil spills (Title:
$30,000,000). (Title: $30,000,000). At the time, it was the
largest civil penalty in the EPA’s history.

01:26:11:12 Tim Phillips: When you make business less competitive because

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 they are having to deal with regulations from the Environmental
Protection Agency and other unelected bureaucracies instead of
creating jobs and instead of being able to compete with our
foreign competitors. We know it kills jobs.

01:26:24:24 Narrator: This is Tim Phillips, the head of the Koch brothers’
latest venture, called Americans for Prosperity.

01:26:31:00 Tim Phillips: (Title: Time Phillips, President, Americans for

Prosperity) We’re genuinely fighting to preserve and expand
economic freedom, which we believe is the best way to get folks
from every walks of life prosperity and a shot at a better life.

01:26:40:22 Narrator: Through Americans for Prosperity, the Koch’s have

provided tremendous financial backing to the Tea Party
movement by organizing rallies and protests, flying in big
name guest speakers…

01:26:50:23 Michelle Bachman: Don’t tax us anymore.

01:26:54:00 Narrator: …And flooding the airwaves with advertising.

01:26:56:09 Americans for Prosperity Advertisement: Wasteful spending must

stop. Go to spendingcrisis.org to make your voice heard.

01:27:02:05 Jane Mayer: People were looking at the Tea Party movement as
this sort of spontaneous combustion, this grassroots thing that
just exploded and what it really was, was something that was
being fed by Libertarian billionaires.

01:27:18:27 David Koch: We want the maximum freedom to launch

businesses, create opportunity, and expand prosperity. We desire
a tax code that does not punish hard work or crush the
entrepreneurial spirit that makes America unique in the world.

01:27:38:13 Jane Mayer: They have this ideology of the free market and how
it’s making money equals freedom and if you listen to the Tea
Party rhetoric, you hear exactly the same phrases.

01:27:49:27 Unknown Tea Party Speaker: Our side, and the side you’re on
today is the side, frankly, of freedom. (Cheers)

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01:27:56:20 Unknown News reporter: They’re chanting ‘Liberty!’ and chanting
‘No more taxes!’

01:28:00:05 Unknown Tea Party female: Freedom, liberty, and people waking
up to the fact that this is our country and it’s up to us to take it
back.

01:28:05:25 Unknown Tea Party male: Our rights are being taken away. Little
by little.

01:28:08:20 Narrator: But what kind of freedom is Americans for

Prosperity talking about? Is it freedom for everyone? Or just
for billionaires who want freedom from taxes, the freedom to
pollute, and freedom from any responsibility to the rest of
society? To answer that question, just go to one of their
rallies, where you’re likely to see signs promoting a once-
discredited philosopher and novelist who’s recently found a
new audience.

01:28:42:01 Mike Wallace: Here in the United States, perhaps the most
challenging and unusual new philosophy has been forged by a
novelist- Ayn Rand. Ms. Rand’s point of view is still comparatively
unknown in America but if it ever did take hold, it would
revolutionize our lives.

01:28:57:29 Ayn Rand: I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an

absolute laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy.

01:29:07:15 Jacob Hacker: Ayn Rand wrote a series of novels that have
become a kind of touchstone for contemporary Republican
politicians, most notably, “Atlas Shrugged.”

01:29:16:06 Unknown Fox Newscaster: There’s Atlas. He holds the world on

his shoulders. What if Atlas shrugged?

01:29:20:28 Market Check Newscaster: Picture this, an anti-Utopia society

that collapses under government controls. Does this sound
familiar? It should. It’s Ayn Rand’s story of “Atlas Shrugged.” And
now it’s a movie. One very popular with Tea Party members.

01:29:36:02 Narrator: Atlas Shrugged is about an America where

businesses are regulated. The rich pay taxes and the

Page 16 of 33
 government tries to help the middle class and the poor. In
other words, a doomsday scenario. In Rand’s world, anyone
who needs a little help in life is a moocher or a parasite. And
anyone who wants to help others is a villain. Her heroes are
proud to be as selfish as possible.

01:30:06:09 Atlas Shrugged 2011:

Character 1: You really don’t care about helping the

underprivileged, do you?

Character 2: No, Philip. I don’t.

01:30:10:09 Narrator: Finally the CEOs of America get sick and tired of
living under a government that no longer caters to them. And
they decide to go on strike.

01:30:17:29 Atlas Shrugged 2011:

Character 1: What are you selling pal?

Character 2: Nothing. I’m simply offering a society that cultivates

individual achievement.

01:30:24:08 Narrator: They head off into the mountains and start a new
society, one where there is no government. Atlas Shrugged
is told as a horror story, a nightmarish vision of what would
happen to our country if wealthy Americans like David Koch
and Steve Schwarzman just left us to fend for ourselves.
(Woman Screaming)

01:30:45:12 Tim Phillips: Yeah, we support it. We had screenings around the
country. We like that story to be out there and we like the ideas to
be out there. We certainly believe and share many of the
principles and values that that book was based on. The inherent
morality of capitalism.

01:31:02:28 Wallace: Do you not like the altruism by which we live?

01:31:06:06 Ayn Rand: Well, you see, I don’t like is too weak a word. I
consider it evil.

01:31:11:11 Jane Mayer: The appeal of Ayn Rand is that, um, you know, it’s

Page 17 of 33
 basically the Gordon Gecko message - greed is good. That
ideology is appealing, I suppose, if you have a tremendous
amount of money. You might feel guilty otherwise.

01:31:24:00 Wallace: How does your philosophy translate itself into the world
of politics?

01:31:29:25 Paul Ryan: We believe that America deserves a choice of two

futures. We believe that…

01:31:34:02 Narrator: Paul Ryan receives more money from the Koch
Brothers than any other member of Congress. He is also the
country’s most powerful politician to publicly embrace the
philosophy of Ayn Rand. By running on his anti-government
views, this republican from Wisconsin became a Tea Party
favorite, a powerful member of congress, and a candidate for
high office.

01:31:55:26 Mitt Romney: Join me in welcoming the next president of the

United States, Paul Ryan…VICE President of the United States
(Laughs)

01:32:04:29 Paul Ryan: We will restore the greatness of this country. It is our
duty to save the American Dream for our children. What kind of
people do we want to be? [(Crowd: Free! Free! Free!) (Title: Free!
Free! Free!)]

01:32:21:00 Narrator: With his rise to prominence, Ryan has denied his
affection for Ayn Rand. But history tells a different story.

Title: Paul Ryan

2005 speech to The Atlas Society

01:32:28:13 Paul Ryan: I grew up reading Ayn Rand, and it taught me quite a
bit about who I am, and what my value systems are, and what my
beliefs are. The reason I got involved in public service, by and
large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person it would be Ayn
Rand.

01:32:42:13 Mike Wallace: You believe that there should be no right by the
government to tax. You believe that there should be no such thing

Page 18 of 33
 as welfare legislation, unemployment compensation.

Paul Ryan: It’s inspired me so much, that its required reading in

my office for all my interns and my staff, we start with Atlas
Shrugged.

Mike Wallace: How do we build roads? Sanitation facilities,

hospitals, schools?

01:33:03:23 Ayn Rand: I believe in private roads, private post offices, private
schools.

01:33:08:22 Paul Ryan: It’s so important that we go back to our roots, to look
at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding
undergrounding principles are, we have to go back to Ayn Rand.

01:33:20:06 Paul Ryan: Our plan takes power away from Washington and
gives it back to the individual.

01:33:25:17 Narrator: While in Congress Ryan put Ayn Rand’s

philosophy into practice through a plan he called “The Path
to Prosperity.” It was a budget proposal that would
dramatically cut government programs for the poor while
handing out an even bigger tax cut for the rich.

01:33:41:07 John Boehner: I think that The Path to Prosperity that Chairman
Ryan and his committee have put together is a blueprint for
America’s Future.

01:33:48:27 Narrator: The Path to Prosperity passed the House of

Representatives in March of 2012. It now appears to be at the
heart of economic philosophy of the Republican Party.

01:33:58:11 Paul Ryan: Mitt Romney and I will take the right steps, in the right
time, to get us back on the right track.

01:34:05:16 Alex Gibney: What do you think of Ryan’s budget framework?

01:34:08:08 Bruce Bartlett: Oh. I think it’s ridiculous on the face of it. He’s
proposing a ten trillion dollar tax cut as part of his deficit reduction
plan and obviously if you’re going to cut taxes by ten trillion
dollars, you’ve got to cut spending by even more than ten trillion

Page 19 of 33
 dollars Every program you could think of - roads, education,
energy - would be more or less abolished if you’re going to take
seriously the numbers he has put forward.

01:34:35:09 Jeffrey Sachs: The idea that there’s legitimate economics behind
this is absurd. Conservatives throughout the ages have never
spoken like Paul Ryan. Milton Friedman talked about a negative
income tax and guaranteed incomes for the poor. Freidrich
Hayek, who was one of the acmes of free market economics,
talked about the need of societies to guarantee minimum
standards and provide health care.

01:35:03:17 Bruce Bartlett: So, there’s clearly an ideology involved here. They
actually want to use tax policy to eviscerate government
programs.

01:35:13:02 Paul Ryan: If we try to go down the path where we had put the
government in the place to equalize the results of peoples’ lives.
Where we try to equalize outcomes. We’ll all be more equally
miserable. Rather, let’s focus on equality of opportunity.

01:35:31:24 Tim Phillips: My mom used to say to me, ‘Son, it don’t matter
where you begin, what matters is where you end. You live in the
United States of America.’ And that’s something that, I think, is an
inherently moral thing about America- it gives you a chance to
make it.

01:35:44:15 Jane Mayer: Much of what they say is about providing opportunity
to make money to everybody equally, that’s what they would
argue about, and, um, it doesn’t seem to accept the possibility
that if you’re poor enough and your schooling is bad enough that
you don’t really have an opportunity to compete.

01:36:12:19 Narration: Almost everyone agrees that education is the key

to upward mobility. For people starting at the bottom of the
ladder, a college degree can quadruple their chances of
making it to the top. But college is increasingly out of reach;
the cost has gone up almost 500% since 1980 Meanwhile,
without a college degree, it’s harder than ever to get a job. If
you only have a high school diploma, there’s a 7/10 chance
that you don’t have full time work at all. It’s a cruel irony that
the US economy has a desperate need for skilled labor in the
manufacturing, hi-tech, and health industries. But there

Page 20 of 33
 aren’t enough qualified workers to fill those jobs. Even with
12 million Americans unable to find work, training and
education programs are being slashed by both parties in
favor of tax cuts for the rich.

01:37:12:09 Tim Smeeding: I find it hard to be an optimist right now, for

people whom I care about, and people who the poverty institute
cares about, people who want to support their families through
work and can’t.

01:37:24:13 Narrator: Today, 1 in 7 Americans receives food stamps.

More than half of those people are children and elderly, 41%
of recipients live in working households. A job is no longer
enough to keep Americans out of poverty.

01:37:40:23 April Dunkley: For the people that think ok they don’t need
anything, they don’t need a handout, they should just go get a job
– yes – as soon as they create jobs for people to get them, then
great, I’m pretty sure they’ll be there. There’s nothing. So what do
you do when there’s nothing? That’s where the safety net comes
in.

01:38:01:15 Narrator: Yet Paul Ryan’s budget proposal would cut the
food stamp program by 134 billion dollars over the next ten
years, which could shred the safety net for 8 million people.

01:38:14:13 [Video Clip]

James: My name’s James.
Paul Ryan: Hey
James: I’m a Christian and practicing catholic like you.
Paul Ryan: Oh, great!
James: I have a question. Um, why did you choose to model your
budget off the extreme ideology of Ayn Rand rather than a basic
economic justice and values of the Bible. I’d like to present you
with a Bible. So you can bone up on what it says about how we
should treat the poor and vulnerable. I suggest you focus on the
gospel Luke.
Paul Ryan: I appreciate it, I’ve got some bibles, thank you very
much.

01:38:43:06 Narrator: In an April 2012 letter, the US conference of

Catholic Bishops urged congress to protect food stamps.
Bishops suggested that if spending cuts were necessary,

Page 21 of 33
 they should be made to government subsidies for rich
agricultural companies, instead of taking food from hungry
children, poor families, and vulnerable seniors.

01:39:02:08 Ryan: Our nation is approaching a tipping point. We’re at a

moment where if government’s growth is left unchecked and
unchallenged, America’s best century will be considered our past
century. This is a future in which we will transform our social
safety net into a hammock.

01:39:19:20 Tim Smeeding: You can hear Paul Ryan talk about his hammock.
This hammock, the average benefit in Wisconsin was 246 dollars
a month last year for two people, about 350 for four.

01:39:30:09 Title: This amounts to less than 3 dollars per person per day.

01:39:34:15 Tim Smeeding: Is that enough for you to say. “Ah! Put my feet up
on a hammock, you know, I got these food stamps. Feeding
people is something that this country can afford to do and should
be able to do. That’s not a hammock.

01:39:47:19 State Roll Call Speaker (Americans for Prosperity Foundation): If

you try to raise our taxes and trample on our liberties, we’re either
going to beat you or make your life miserable.

01:40:03:20 Jeffrey Sachs: The government has been starved of funds, we’re
at about the lowest tax collection as a share of national income,
in our modern history. We can’t even pay for the most basic
public services right now. We can’t keep our schools functioning;
we can’t keep our roads intact. Taxes are the price you pay for
civilization. And if you don’t pay taxes, you don’t get civilization,
it’s as simple as that!

01:40:18:15 Narrator: By that measure, our civilization is in trouble.

01:40:22:11 TV Reporter: General Electric made 5 billion dollars in US profits

last year, but claimed a 3.3 billion dollar tax credit.

01:40:46:13 Narrator: These days, some of the nation’s most profitable

companies are paying little or no taxes at all. Thanks to tax
breaks, loopholes, and clever accounting, the tax rate

Page 22 of 33
 corporations actually pay is at an all time low. The same
thing is true for personal income taxes, especially for the
ultra rich. Tax rates for millionaires have dropped more than
25% in the last two decades. And for a handful of extremely
wealthy individuals at the top, taxes have fallen by almost
50%. A big part of the dip is because of the tax cuts signed
into law by President George W. Bush. Bush slashed the
capital gains rate on investments to 15% nearly half what the
rate was under Ronald Reagan.

01:41:36:24 Bruce Bartlett: The Republicans made all these arguments back
in 2003, that if we cut taxes on dividends and capital gains and
reduce the top tax rate on the wealthy, we’ll get this explosion of
investment and growth and jobs. You can look up the data for
yourselves, but I certainly don’t remember any big increase in
growth after 2003. There was essentially no economic impact at
all except that it increased the deficit
[Graph: Average GDP Growth in the US]

Narrator: The Bush Tax cuts have added over $2.9 trillion to
01:42:03:08 the national debt. Paul Ryan’s proposed tax cuts would add
another 4.6 trillion in debt over the next ten years. What’s
hard to understand about this relentless push to cut the
taxes for the rich is that they already have so much more
than the rest of us. In 1965, CEOs made about twenty times
as much as the average worker. Today, by the most
conservative estimates, that number is 231. So what’s going
on here? Are CEO’s getting paid more because they deserve
it? Meet another resident of 740 Park: John Thain, the
highest paid CEO in 2007.
Graph: 2187: CEOs pay compared to Worker’s Wages

01:42:50:19 Michael Gross: Thain’s apartment is actually my personal

favorite, for if I could live at 740 Park – It’s a little tiny jewel-box
duplex.

01:43:00:07 Title: It’s 3,700 square feet.

01:43:02:08 Narrator: Thain had been a senior executive at Goldman

Sachs and served as CEO of the New York Stock Exchange
before becoming the head of the investment bank Merrill
Lynch. In 2008, as losses were soaring and his company’s
stock was plummeting, Thain was busy with a 1.2 million

Page 23 of 33
 dollar office renovation.

01:43:21:00 Maria Bartiromo: You spent more than a million dollars renovating
your office. Is this true?

01:43:25:04 John Thain: It was my office. It was two conference rooms and it
was a reception area. But it is clear to me, in today’s world, that it
was a mistake. I apologize for spending that money on those
things.

01:43:38:25 Narrator: While Thain was busy picking chairs, rugs and
wastebaskets, Merrill and the other investment banks helped
bring down the global economy.

01:43:46:22 News Anchor: Wall Street has been turned upside down.

01:43:49:13 News Anchor: The collapse of one investment bank, the take over
of another.

01:43:52:08 News Anchor: 29 billion to help JP Morgan

01:43:54:19 News Anchor: 85 billion dollars to bail out the insurance giant AIG

01:43:58:19 Narrator: Wall Street was rescued by US tax payers, not only
through bailouts, but also through government loans that
carried virtually no interest.

01:44:05:23 George W. Bush: I’m confident that this rescue plan, along with
other measures taken by the treasury department and the federal
reserve, will begin to restore strength and stability to America’s
financial system and overall economy.

01:44:18:04 Narrator: Meanwhile, under presidents Bush and Obama,

millions of middle-class American homeowners facing
foreclosure received only a tiny fraction of the bailouts given
to wealthy bankers. In the end, Merrill Lynch suffered over 27
billion dollars in losses under Thain’s leadership and was
sold to Bank of America, but that didn’t stop Thain from
handing out 3.6 billion dollars in performance bonuses to
Merrill executives.

Page 24 of 33
01:44:44:10 NBC Narrator: Bonuses were paid even as Merrill suffered 15
billion dollars in losses.

01:44:50:11 Michael Gross: If you live in a world where everyone you know is
chasing huge sums of money everyday, and their morality is
determined by what it’s necessary to do to get richer and richer
and richer, you’re not going to have the same moral constructs
affecting your behavior.

01:45:15:02 Doorman:. When I started at 740 I was like, “this is great,” you
know. Come around to Christmas time, I’m going to get a
thousand from each resident, you know, because they are multi-
billionaires. But it’s not that way. These guys are businessmen.
They know what the going rate is. They’re not going to give you
any more than that. The cheapest person overall was David
Koch. We would load up his trucks, two vans usually, every
weekend for the Hamptons. I mean multiple trips, multiple guys.
In and out, in and out. Heavy bags. We would never get a tip from
Mr. Koch. We would never get a smile from Mr. Koch. Fifty-dollar
check for Christmas. (Interviewer: A check?) A check, too. I mean,
at least you could give us cash.
01:46:01:19 Michael Gross: just because you’re rich doesn’t make you smart.
Just because you’re rich doesn’t make you cultured, just because
you’re rich doesn’t make you refined. Being rich means you’re
rich. Some rich people are just dicks.

01:46:14:15 Reporter: Steven Schwarzman unleashed a disgusting

comparison. Over the administration’s effort to increase taxes he
said quote “it’s a war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in
1939.”

01:46:26:20 Paul Piff: In thousands of different people that we’ve studied

across the country, the more you have, the more entitled and
deserving of those things you feel. And that might account, in
part, for the vitriol that you see when people feel like their
privileged position is being undermined by others.

01:46:42:15 Pundit: Since when in this country, was it OK to demonize

success?

01:46:47:05 Pundit: The free enterprise system is under attack.

Page 25 of 33
01:46:49:04 Pundit: Back to the old populist “demonize the rich.”

01:46:52:03 Bruce Bartlett: The Republicans are always complaining about

the Democrats playing class warfare.

01:46:56:19 Pundit: The Democratic party’s gonna have to stop bashing the
rich.

01:46:59:14 Bruce Bartlett: But they do it themselves by, for example, they’re
always quick to point out that something like half of all people
who file individual income tax returns have either a zero or a
negative tax liability.

01:47:14:12 Steve Schwarzman: We have a system today in the United

States, where 45% of Americans don’t pay any income tax. You
have to have skin in the game.

01:47:23:11 John Thain: Over 45% of the people in the country don’t pay
income taxes at all, and we have to question whether that’s fair.

01:47:31:14 Tim Smeeding: Those are people who don’t pay income taxes.
Ok? It includes all elderly women living alone who just have
enough social security, they don’t even declare it. It includes
disabled people who don’t have earnings. All of those people pay
payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes.

01:47:49:20 Bruce Bartlett: State and local taxes, gasoline taxes, liquor taxes,

01:47:53:13 Tim Smeeding: This is ridiculous to say low-income people don’t

pay taxes. They do pay taxes and they pay a lot of them.

01:47:59:10 Jane Mayer: They’ve managed to take the resentment of the

middle class, which has actually been quite economically
squeezed over the last couple decades, and turn their resentment
against the people beneath them.

01:48:16:28 Paul Ryan: I think we’re reaching a tipping point; we’re coming
close to a tipping point in America, where we might have a net
majority of takers versus makers in society.

01:48:17:00 Bruce Bartlett: It’s really, you know, like a magician, you know,

Page 26 of 33
 trying to point people in the opposite direction so they won’t
notice what’s really going on.

01:48:26:15 Jane Mayer: If you can take the resentment of the middle class
and point it downward, rather than having it point upward to the
people on the top of the one percent who are really walking away
richer than ever, then you can succeed politically. And I think
they’ve been very good at that.

01:48:43:01 Bruce Barlett: You know the poor are not very well represented in
our system of government I’m afraid.

01:48:49:18 Alex Gibney: Why is that do you think?

01:48:51:20 Bruce Bartlett: Well, I think one reason, I think has a lot to do with
the decline of the unions. Throughout the 30s and 40s and 50s
the unions were the vanguard of pushing for social legislation that
would help the lower classes in general.

01:49:09:00 Narrator: Unions are perhaps the only organizations with

significant financial and political clout that actually represent
the working class. Since the late 70s, corporate interests
have been extremely successful at limiting the power of
unions. Only public sector unions have shown signs of
growth. And the Koch brothers have put their financial
muscle behind an effort to destroy them.

01:49:33:00 Tim Phillips: Wisconsin is ground zero. I think it’s going to

determine largely whether or not the pampered nature of these
public employee unions is finally reined in.

01:49:42:16 Jane Mayer: If you, like David Koch and Charles Koch, want to
take over American politics, you’re going to want to knock out
whatever the organized forces are on the other side.

01:49:51:13 Judge: Discharge the duties…

01:49:53:01 Narrator: On January 3 2011, Scott Walker became governor

rd

of Wisconsin. He had received significant financial support

from the Koch brothers.

Page 27 of 33
01:50:05:00 Marc Pocan: The national conservative movement wanted a Petri
dish and we were that and he was more than willing to do what
they wanted not the people of Wisconsin

01:50:13:26 Walker: Good morning.

01:50:15:23 Narrator: Walker quickly introduced a bill to balance the

state’s budget but it disguised a much broader agenda.

01:50:22:10 Tim Smeeding: The governor came in and he said look, you
know, you guys got a great deal on your pension, you don’t pay
anything for your pension and it’s a good pension so you should
pay 5%.

01:50:29:14 Scott Walker: Half of what the overall contribution is which is

about 5.8%

01:50:34:15 Tim Smeeding: OK. Compared to other places that I see? OK. He
said you should pay more for your healthcare.

01:50:40:00 Scott Walker: We’re asking for a healthcare premium contribution

of just about 12 and a half percent.

01:50:46:02 Tim Smeeding: Eh, we got a good deal on healthcare, OK.

01:50:48:13 Scott Walker: We remove healthcare and pension contributions

from collective bargaining.

01:50:53:24 Tim Smeeding: Then he said wait a minute now we don’t want
any more collective bargaining. Well you know and we went
“Whoa wait a minute! Stop, you can’t do that!”

01:50:59:27 Narrator: Walker’s legislation was a surprise attack on the

political power of public sector unions and their ability to
negotiate on behalf of workers.

01:50:08:19 Mahlon Mitchell: Take away collective bargaining and what does
a person that’s making lets say 7-9 dollars an hour at University
of Wisconsin hospital serving lunch, what voice will they have in
the workplace?

Page 28 of 33
01:51:20:07 Narrator: Within days, the largest unions announced that
they were willing to make sacrifices that would help save the
state money, but they wouldn’t give up their collective
bargaining rights.

01:51:29:17 ABC News Anchor: The unions and the democrats have said
they’re willing to take the concessions on wage and health
benefits. They’re willing to take about an 8% pay cut but they
simply don’t want you to take away their collective bargaining
rights.

01:51:41:06 Scott Walker: What we’re asking for realistically is something that
nearly every other person in this state and every other person
across this country’s paying a whole lot more for when it comes
to retirement.

01:51:51:04 ABC News Anchor: But they already said they’re ready to give
that up—Governor, they already said they’re willing to give up on
the pensions and healthcare. (Scott Walker: But that’s not) They
already said that—They’ve already made those concessions

01:51:59:06 Scott Walker: But that’s a red herring. But… You can say anything
in the midst of the debate.

01:52:04:04 Liz Wingert: Then we really knew it was not about fixing a budget
at all. It was about breaking unions and breaking the political
power that unions have.

01:52:15:11 Mahlon Mitchell: Governor Walker’s agenda is a national agenda.

I mean and it’s seeded and it’s well funded by the Koch brothers.

01:52:27:20 Title: Madison, Wisconsin

February 19, 2011

01:52:29:13 Narrator: For more than a year, Wisconsin became a

battleground. Pro-union protestors occupied the state house
for more than two weeks. They gathered over a million
signatures to force a recall election to get Walker removed.
The unions spent millions fighting for their survival, but
wealthy interests outside the state spent far more. The
biggest single source of money was Americans For
Prosperity, which has spent over ten million dollars to

Page 29 of 33
 support Scott Walker. (Title: $10,000,000)

01:53:01:10 Tim Phillips: Today we have more activists in our Wisconsin AFP
chapter than there are members of the Wisconsin Teacher’s
Union. We have a very strong, vibrant operation there.

01:53:10:01 Liz Wingert: Walker has painted teacher’s and other public union
employees as the haves and the private sector as the have nots.

01:53:20:26 Jeff Wingert: What they are trying to do is really squash you so
that they can have that much more power and you can have that
much less voice.

01:53:31:12 Liz Wingert: It’s teachers whose pay has been reduced against
the Koch brothers. It’s not a really fair fight.
01:53:38:00 [Phone ringing]

01:53:40:07 Scott Walker: Hi this is Scott Walker.

01:53:42:03 Man’s Voice: Scott. David Koch. How are you?

01:53:44:08 Scott Walker: Good David. I’m good, yourself?

01:53:47:26 Man’s Voice: I’m very well.

01:53:46:25 Title: On February 24, 2011 Scott Walker received a prank call
from someone posing as David Koch.

01:53:52:13 Man’s Voice: Little disheartened by the situation there but what’s
the latest?

01:53:55:14 Scott Walker: Uh well, announced Thursday. And we’ll probably

get 5-6,000 state workers will get at risk notices for layoffs.

01:54:03:21 Man’s Voice: Beautiful, beautiful. Gotta crush that union.

01:54:06:27 Title: The call lasted for 20 minutes.
01:54:09:07 Scott Walker: They just gotta pass the message on with these
guys. If they think I’m caving, they’ve been asleep for the last

Page 30 of 33
 eight years cause we don’t budge.

01:54:17:12 David Koch: God damn right. But uh, what we’re thinking about
the crowds was planting some troublemakers.

01:54:25:21 Scott Walker: You know, we thought about that. My only gut
reaction to that would be let them protest all they want. Sooner or
later the media stops finding them interesting. The next question,
I talk to Kasich every day, you know, John’s got to stand firm in
Ohio. I think we can do the same thing with Rick Scott in Florida, I
think Snyder if he got a little more support probably could do that
in Michigan. You start going down the list, a lot of those new
governors who got elected could do something big.

01:54:55:10 David Koch: You’re the first Domino.

01:54:57:04 Scott Walker: Yup. This is our moment. This is our time to change
the course of history.

01:55:05:28 Title: Governor Walker signed the budget repair bill on March 11,
2011, eliminating almost all collective bargaining rights for public
sector unions.

He went on to win the recall election, the most expensive in

Wisconsin History.

01:55:18:16 Narrator: In places like Wisconsin, the doors of opportunity

for those on the lower rungs of society are closing quickly.

01:55:26:01 Stephen Schwarzman: We are in very real danger that the

American dream is slipping from the grasp of the next generation.

Title: 66 Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner

th

01:55:35:00 Narrator: This charity event is a moment for wealthy New

Yorkers to give some of their fortunes to the poor. Over the
last decade, Stephen Schwarzman has given over 7 million
dollars to New York’s Inner-City Scholarship Fund.

01:55:48:16 Stephen Schwarzman: I worry that the social fabric of America is

being ripped purposefully by people who are taking advantage of

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 individuals who are suffering.

01:56:01:00 Narrator: Mr. Schwarzman appears to be sympathetic for

those living in poverty, but oddly, for one of America’s
greatest capitalists, he doesn’t seem to understand, that
unlike Monopoly, real capitalism is a game that is played for
keeps. For every big winner, there are lots of losers. Wealth
is created, but so is poverty. Without popular Democracy, all
the gains of our economy will go to the top.

01:56:30:26 Protestors (Chanting): Show me what Democracy looks like!

Title: “Millionaires March”

740 Park Avenue

01:56:39:26 Protestor: I’m from Michigan. This is where our money is. People
lost their homes in the banking and mortgage crisis, and it went
here.

01:56:49:13 Colin Dunkley: There’s nothing wrong with being rich. God wants
all his children to be rich. But don’t be rich and at a place where
you ain’t thinking about anybody else.

01:56:59:16 Jeffrey Sachs: They feel they need, not ten billion dollars, but
twenty billion dollars of wealth. They get that extra wealth by
twisting politics, buying politicians. America became a place
where money buys everything.

01:57:26:22 Narrator: The rich are often held up as shining examples of

what’s possible in America. Proof that anyone can make it.
But is there still a bridge to economic opportunity in our
country? When we look at the river that separates the two
Park Avenues, do we see a channel to prosperity for
everyone? Or a barrier that prevents the poor from
crossing? As long as our political leaders depend on the rich
to win elections and stay in office, they will write laws to
protect the castles of wealth and power on the other side of
this river, a river that has become a deep and forbidding
moat.

01:58:15:22 Title: The following people declined to be interviewed or failed to

respond to multiple requests: David Koch, Charles Koch, Paul
Ryan, Charles Schumer, Steven Schwarzman, John Thain, Scott

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 Walker.

01:58:31:05 Title: END

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