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Head of Toyota Assures Public Cars are Safe; Flights Canceled, Delayed Ahead of Storm; Jobless Rate Drops Slightly; Federal Air Marshal Commission Criticized for Ineffectiveness; Tea Party Convention Held in Nashville.

Aired February 05, 2010 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: More on this to come on CNN. You're looking at live pictures now at the Miami International Airport. Our Ali Velshi is coming up next. He will update you on the story. So make sure you stay tuned. I'm Don Lemon. Here's Ali Velshi.

ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Look at the size of that thing, Don. That thing is the size of a car. We're going to find out how it is, exactly, that a piece that big falls off of a plane into a parking lot.

I'm Ali Velshi. I'm going to be with you for the next two hours today and every weekday. I'm going to take every important topic we cover and break it down for you. We have a lot to break down for you today.

Right now, we've got a massive weather event going in the northeast of this country. Huge winter storm socking the mid- Atlantic. Flights are canceled. Snow is falling fast and hard. We'll have more and lots of details on that in just a moment.

But, first, Toyota's troubles roll on today. CNN's global resources are all over it. We've got Kyung Lah reporting from Nagoya, Japan, home of Toyota's headquarters. CNN's Richard Quest is live from London for some context and perspective. In New York City, Mike Quincy from "Consumer Reports." He's the top auto guy there. He's going to tell us what you're supposed to do and what long-term impact this is going to have on Toyota.

But let's start with Kyung Lah, who was rushed to the scene when Toyota announced, with very little notice, that they were actually going to say something about this.

Kyung, you got on a train. You were -- you got there as fast as you can and barely made it in. The whole thing was very, very strange the way it unfolded. Tell us what happened.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It certainly was. We got a phone call about 6:30 or so, saying there is going to be a news conference. And we thought, "Great." Akio Toyoda, the head of Toyota Motor Corporation, this is what we have been wanting, a chance to ask him questions about all this.

But then we heard that it's going to be in Nagoya, where I'm at. It's a two-hour train ride to get here. We were barely going to make it. By the time we got in, it had just started. We set up, plugged in, and it started. And there were a lot of sweaty reporters in that room who had to run from the train station to make it there in time.

So what he did was, though, he did offer an apology, Ali. It is something that consumers really wanted to hear. They wanted to see the face of this company that really has so many questions swirling about the safety of its cars. Millions of those recalls going on.

He said that he would offer a global committee to look at what led up to the recall and what exactly they can do to prevent any other problems like this happening in the future. But he did assert that the cars that Toyota makes are safe.

Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AKIO TOYODA, TOYOTA MOTOR CORPORATION (through translator): Quality is our lifeline. We are making the utmost effort with everyone involved. I do not leave my responsibilities to others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAH: But he certainly did say that he does have some work ahead, trying to make sure that his customers know that he wants them to be there in the showrooms in the future -- Ali.

VELSHI: I know you've been working on this. It's 3 in the morning now. You've been sort of -- because I know we were e-mailing last night. So you've been going at this for a long time.

One of the things, one of the rumors that we were wondering about, was the rumor swirling around about a recall of the 2010 Prius. They didn't say that there's a recall. They've not announced one. It's now 3 in the morning on Saturday, so they may not announce one tonight or on the weekend, but they did address this issue of the Prius and the brakes.

LAH: They certainly did. They actually addressed this yesterday, as well. It's been an ongoing discussion among the media and Toyota. We were thinking that programs the recall of the Toyota -- of the Prius might be something that happens this evening and that's perhaps why it was so hastily arranged, but it didn't happen.

So what we are hearing, though, is that Toyota is saying that that fix is in place on vehicles that have been made by Toyota, the 2010 Prius, from last week. That is you owned a car before then, they still haven't figured out exactly what to do and how to renovate those.

And when asked are you trying to hide something, is there something else deeper about the Prius? What we heard from the president is no. And the vice president of quality control says that the company has been straightforward and as honest as it can be, Ali. VELSHI: Kyung, I don't think anybody needs too much description about the importance and history of Toyota. But there where you are in Japan, this is the car that is driven from the emperor down to the worker. I mean, this -- this is part of the national fabric.

LAH: This is absolutely a part of the national fabric. It is stitched into the economy. It is stitched into the pride. It is stitched into the "made in Japan" label. What is made in Japan -- this is an export-driven economy, and the biggest exporter in this economy is Toyota. It is an identity that is beyond just the corolla or the Camry. It is deeply entrenched with the Japanese identity.

So, if this automaker is dented in its reputation, the concern here that is that it is going to dent the other companies in this economy, but also all the products that are aligned with the world's second largest economy there is concern that it may have a spillover effect and further damage this struggling economy, Ali.

VELSHI: Excellent reporting from Nagoya, Japan, normally based in Toyota. Thanks for this, and I suspect you're going to have a few more sleepless nights. Kyung Lah in Toyota.

As I said, we've got the global resources of CNN on this story. Let's take it to London, where Richard Quest of CNN's "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS" is standing by, and New York where "Consumer Reports" auto specialist Mike Quincy is there.

I want to start with you Richard Richard and Mike, you and I have had this discussion already today. Richard, I am of the view that you couldn't have handled your situation worse in terms of your brand management than Toyota has done, and you've taken issue with me on this?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: I take issue from a point of pragmatism. I take issue in the sense of what would you have had them do differently?

While -- Kyung Lah made the point brilliantly. She said it's Japan's largest exporter. Toyota, as a company, is virtually like a small country in its own right.

Now, you know, how governments are difficult when something goes wrong. They investigate. They find out. They need to know what happened before they can authoritatively come out and apologize.

Where I think they could have been slightly faster off the mark, where I do lean towards you ever so slightly -- and I do mean ever so slightly -- is that perhaps the top man could have been a little more visible earlier in the crisis. He could have been saying -- we could have seen who was responsible.

But this idea that you can come out, right at the beginning, say what's wrong, say how to deal with it, say you're sorry, I think it's just being unrealistic and fanciful.

VELSHI: Bollocks, as you might say. Stay right where you are, Richard.

Mike, stay right where you are. Mike has actually got the answer to what you're supposed to do if you own one of these vehicles that gets into trouble. He'll be right back with that. Stay with us. The Toyota conversation continues, right here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: All right. Back to our hard look at what's going on with Toyota right now. Let's go to London. Richard Quest is there. Michael Quincy is the -- is an auto specialist at "Consumer Reports." He's in our studios in New York.

Michael, nothing gives me greater pleasure than somebody who knows what he's talking about, taking a bit of a piece out of Quest. But you are not going to give me satisfaction on this, because the two of you are on the same side of this thing. You don't think it's as big a deal as some of us think it is for Toyota.

MICHAEL QUINCY, AUTO SPECIALIST, "CONSUMER REPORTS": From a consumer's standpoint, "Consumer Reports" has gone on record about saying this: if you own a Toyota, you shouldn't panic. You should drive the car as you normally would.

Keep attuned, though, to how does the accelerator pedal feel. If it is -- if it's very stiff, if it's not bouncing back to its normal upright position, if you don't feel that it's accelerating smoothly, definitely bring it in to your dealer to get it checked out.

But honestly, from a data point standpoint, this is a rare occasion. Sudden acceleration doesn't happen that often. And so I wouldn't -- I wouldn't panic. There isn't blood in the streets. Drive your car. But again, be on top of how it's performing.

VELSHI: OK. Let me just have you say it, right on TV. You agree with Richard Quest that this is not long-term, particularly damaging to Toyota's reputation.

QUEST: No, no, no.

VELSHI: Did I misquote you, Richard?

QUINCY: Yes.

QUEST: Yes, once again...

QUINCY: I agree with Richard, because the company -- Toyota's a huge company. North America's very important to them.

I mean, do I think they handled this well from the public relations standpoint? No, I think they -- that right now their cars are smarter than their executives.

However, they're going to recover from it. You have to admit, I mean, you have to think about how difficult it is to build these cars. They're coming from different assembly lines, different suppliers. You've got to get all these components to work together. They're the world's No. 1 volume automaker. With that perhaps comes a tougher job of quality control.

VELSHI: There you go, Richard, vindicated.

QUEST: Ali, Ali, it's very simple. Toyota will recover from this. The sheer size means they will. Did they do what -- did Mr. Toyoda come out and say what he should have done? Probably not. But I challenge anybody before they criticize to actually say, when you've got a mega-crisis like this, how you'd have done it better.

VELSHI: Michael Quincy, if you are experiencing this brake thing, you've got a really good breakdown, which you can get on CNN, by the way, CNN.com/Toyota. But you've got a good breakdown of what you do. Give me a nutshell of what you're supposed to do if you have a problem in a Toyota.

QUINCY: Well, actually, Ali, it can happen with any car. Every manufacturer has recalls. Every manufacturer has incidents in the database of the government where you've got unintended acceleration.

The best thing you can do, press your foot firmly on the brake. Keep it there. Don't pump the pedal. Pop the transmission into neutral and safely steer to the side of the road. That should take care of the problem. But the first and foremost, don't panic.

VELSHI: All right. Gentlemen, Mike Quincy in New York, Richard Quest, let's hear it.

(BELL RINGING)

VELSHI: There you go, "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS."

We will stay on top of this story as we have the whole time, every piece of news there is to know about a Toyota that is around you or that is in your garage, you will find out here right on CNN. You can go to CNN.com/Toyota, as well.

Listen, we're going to turn the corner to another very, very important story today, the U.S. labor front. Every politician will tell you -- and by the way, so do you in our polling. You say jobs are the top priority. We've got big new numbers on the jobs front.

The official unemployment rate in January has actually fallen. It's gone from 10 percent to 9.7 percent.

In the last month, in January, 20,000 jobs were lost. And they've revised the number of jobs lost since the beginning of this recession to 8.4 million. That's 1.2 million jobs more than we thought.

Let's take a look. Let's go back for a little while and show you the monthly job losses. Here's some of the good news.

If you go back to the beginning of this recession, which was January of 2007, that's when the job losses were very small. Take a look at this trend. You get down to January of last year, a year ago, 740,000 jobs lost, and we've seen the trend come back. So while the news is not fantastic -- we even saw one month of gains here -- while the news is not fantastic, I think anybody can look at this graph and say things are apparently getting better on the job front.

We're going to talk a little bit more about this. I do want to show you, though, I want to show you a map of the United States. The average unemployment in the country is 9.7 percent, OK? We have put in red those states with an unemployment rate that is two percentage points or more higher than the national average.

You've got Rhode Island over here. You've got Michigan. You've got some states in the southwest and the southeast. Most of the country is not that much higher than the national average.

Let me show you those states that are better than the national average. In other words, if you're ready to move, you have nothing stopping you from moving, go to those states that are green, because they've got an unemployment rate that is two points lower than the national average or more. You can see the plains, the mountain states are in there, Virginia, Maryland, and you can see there's some other states scattered around.

But the bottom line is there are actually more states with an unemployment rate that is lower than the national average than the other way around.

OK, big story we're covering; another big story we're covering today. We've got a lot of news to break down for you. A severe weather event is happening in our country. So let's go right to our severe weather expert, Chad Myers. He's tracking, in this particular case, flight cancellations and delays going into the mid-Atlantic states.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Delta already canceling 230 flights in and out of Philadelphia, Baltimore and D.C. Two hundred and thirty already in anticipation of what's coming.

On Flight Tracker here behind me, I can show you the flights that are still coming in to D.C. A JetBlue flight here. We've got a United flight up to the north here, an American Airline flight coming out of Miami. But very few. In fact, Ali, only 13 flights into D.C. right now, and they will be some of the last ones in.

Southwest going to cancel all flights after 2 p.m. It's the snow. It's coming in. It is going to literally put some -- so much snow in these jetway areas that they don't want to get their planes stuck on the tarmac or stuck in these jetway areas, as we go into the weekend, and have no planes to move anywhere else. They don't want the planes in this area. And they're not sending them. So, call ahead at best or find a train.

VELSHI: All right. Over the next two hours you and I are going to stay on top of this.

MYERS: Absolutely. VELSHI: I am one of those guys, as you know, who was affected by it. I told you I was going to Atlantic City. That's not happening. My flights are canceled, too. We're going to stay on top of this for everybody else who's having their travel plans changed. Chad Myers is at the severe weather center.

We'll get back to the story about jobs in just a moment. My co- anchor Christine Romans is joining me now to tell us why -- or she's going to join me right after the break there. She's ready to talk to us, about why the unemployment numbers matter and what it means to your life. When we come back on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right. Christine Romans standing by to -- to talk to us about this unemployment number. We -- this happens every month. We get an unemployment number. Sometimes it matters less than other times, but this is one of those times where we're an economy in transition. Some people say we're out of a recession, so we want to it feel better than it does.

And when we hear that we lost 20,000 jobs in the month of November -- month of January, I'm sorry, and then we also hear that the unemployment rate is down, you wonder why people are confused about money, Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, look, this is a very big report with a lot of different data, and then you hear about, Ali, a revision over the past 25 months that really means we lost 8.4 million jobs in the recession, more than 1 million more than we thought. And you say, "Wait, how did a million jobs disappear and we didn't know it?"

That just shows you how deep and devastating this recession has been. So on the one hand, it shows the recession was far, far worse for the American worker than we thought. And we knew it was terrible.

VELSHI: Yes.

ROMANS: On the other hand, as your great graphic showed, this is slowing down. This bloodletting in corporate America is slowing down.

VELSHI: Those bar graphs, you can't but see that a year ago was the worst that it was. It's a perfect "V," as I often say, the shape of my upper body. I mean, it does show that things are improving quite dramatically.

In fact, we have that -- Valerie, we can put that up so that Christine can talk about this. Christine, if you were listening to the headlines this morning -- you were on TV when it happened -- you got two mixed signals.

ROMANS: Yes.

VELSHI: The unemployment rate was down.

ROMANS: Right.

VELSHI: And you and I often talk about the fact that the unemployment rate is, in some instances, less important than whether or not jobs were created in a given month. We need more jobs to be out there. We need people to have jobs to go into.

ROMANS: Look. And when you look at that unemployment rate, I'm going to tell you right now, Ali, and I think you're probably going to agree with me, the unemployment rate is probably going to pop around for the next few months, because as people either bail out completely from the labor market, and as our friend, Bill Rogers, former labor economist at the Labor Department, told us earlier today for our "YOUR $$$$$" show, it's probably because a lot of people just left. They got discouraged, and they left the labor market. And so that's why that unemployment rate went down a little bit.

If people get encouraged again by the headlines and start entering the labor market, it could go up.

VELSHI: The unemployment rate actually could go up. Yes.

ROMANS: But we want companies to be creating jobs. We want them to be confident in creating jobs with health benefits, right? With good salaries. And we want to be able to have opportunities for people, and we're not seeing that yet.

We are seeing a less-bad situation. But we're not seeing opportunities being created for everyone just yet. And that's something we are all hoping is going to happen sometime this year. We just don't know when.

VELSHI: All right. If you -- if you are the kind of person who's as interested in this as we are, we've got a great show this weekend, Saturday at 1 p.m., Sunday at 3. The reason I say that is because we've Bill Rogers, who's a former chief economist at the Department of Labor.

ROMANS: Right.

VELSHI: We have Lakshman Achuthan, who does nothing but track this stuff as a career.

ROMANS: Yes.

VELSHI: And he actually said, I remember him saying 2010 is your friend if you're a job seeker. It's actually going to get better from here.

But I just heard from Mark Zandi (ph), another economist we talk to, who said you're going to see 10 percent unemployment all the way to the midterm elections, and that's a problem for -- for the Democrats.

ROMANS: Yes. I think that's true. And I think this is going to be a big political and economic story for the rest of the year. Look, when you have even 9.7 percent unemployment, Ali, that is terrible. It's not a condition that you want. It's not good for America. It's not good for American families. But at least we know that the trajectory is moving slowly, slowly, slowly, in right direction. But you can't sugarcoat it.

VELSHI: Yes. It is what it is.

ROMANS: You're going to hear people try to sugarcoat it and say, look, you know, the worst is over. You just -- you can't sugarcoat it. It is what it is.

VELSHI: Yes.

ROMANS: That's a great -- that's very great economic, technical way to put it: it is what it is.

VELSHI: Think of that as a name for the show. Christine, good to see you.

And again, you can see us Saturday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern on "YOUR $$$$$" on CNN.

I will tell you later on in this show, we're going to have two experts on here to talk about your job. One who's going to tell you how to get a job, and the other one is going to tell you what to do if you've just been laid off from your job.

But we're going to give you information that you need right now, by the way, and that's got to do with the weather.

Let's go back to our severe weather center with our severe weather expert, Chad Myers.

Chad, what do you got?

MYERS: I just want to go through city by city, Ali, and tell you what we're going to experience this weekend.

Beautiful shot of the capitol, but then if you take a look down here in this dark area, you can already see the snowflakes flying. Well, I've heard a lot of really bad forecasts for D.C., including 28 inches inside the beltway. That's just not going to happen.

VELSHI: Yes.

MYERS: That's not going to happen. I got nothing for that forecast. I don't even know who came up with that number.

But here's the thing: a lot of this, the first 15 inches of snow will pack down to about 7, because of how much moisture is in this snow. We usually take -- the computer's only don't give us snow, they give us how much water's coming out. And we multiply that number of water times ten, ten inches, because of one inch of water will give you ten inches of snow. You can't multiply this storm by ten, maybe by six. So that first one inch of rain, which some forecasters are saying, "Oh, it will be 10." Not -- not -- there's no way it's going to be 10. It's going to be 5 or 6, and it's going to be packed down, and it's going to be very heavy.

It's already snowing Indianapolis to Columbus. It's snowing in Richmond, but I guarantee you, Richmond, it will change over to rain. This is not a storm like you had last week.

A storm for D.C., a storm for Baltimore and on up into Pennsylvania, that's where the areas will see the heaviest snow. Right through here. South of this line, south of D.C., even Anacostia southward, you may only see 6 inches, 8 inches of snow, because it's going to come down as -- or rain/snow. Rain/snow mix. It's going to try to fall down as snow, and it's just going to be melted. It's going to be just a mess.

So, if you're down here in southern Maryland, Salisbury all the way to Chop Tank Bridge (ph), all the way over to Eastern Shore, this is going to be a sloppy rain/snow mess, not piling up that much.

But watch when you move 5 inches of mess, because it weighs the same as 15 inches of snow.

VELSHI: Yes.

MYERS: The snow to the north of D.C. and Philadelphia and Baltimore. That's the area that's going to really pile up. There will be pictures (ph).

VELSHI: OK. And lots of flight cancellations, you said.

MYERS: Two hundred and thirty.

VELSHI: Delta. Delta has. Southwest isn't going into BWI, into Philadelphia.

All right, Chad's on the case. You know when Chad takes his jacket off that it's -- it's serious business. We've got full coverage on this, by the way. We've got Reynolds Wolf out in the field, as well.

I want to show you something else, by the way. I want to take you to Miami for a second and show you a parking lot. And look at the size of that chunk of metal in the parking lot. It's almost the size of a car.

It fell off a plane. It dropped off a cargo plane that was approaching Miami International Airport, landed smack dab into the middle of a shopping mall parking lot. This was a 747 cargo plane.

Amazingly, no injuries. Can you imagine? Can you imagine this thing, almost the size of a car, falling out of the sky? There's the plane, Atlas Air. It's a cargo plane flying, a Boeing 747. It has landed safely. And there are investigators are on the scene. Can you imagine? What a lucky thing; nobody got hit by that.

All right. You've got perks and then you've got perks. "Fortune" magazine is out with its list of the 100 best companies to work for. The No. 1 firm has taken perks to a whole new level. Stephanie Elam gives a tease.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This software company pampers employees from head to toe. Where can workers shoot some hoops or get a hairstyle without leaving the corporate campus? The answer, after the break.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELAM (voice-over): What company has an on-site gym and a hair salon? Software giant SAS takes the No. 1 spot on "Fortune" magazine's list of the 100 best companies to work for. The firm's North Carolina headquarters also has a free health-care clinic, a daycare center, massages, and live music during lunch.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love it. I love it. I wouldn't want to work anywhere else.

ELAM: A work/life balance is also a priority. The private company offers flexible hours, a 35-hour work week, and unlimited sick time. No wonder it's No. 1.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Every now and then, there's a study that's made for me. A reason not to exercise. A new study says for many people working out does nothing to improve endurance. And who's to blame? Your parents.

The study was done by an international group of researchers. It says one in five people are genetically predisposed to have little improvement in endurance even if they work out regularly. Interesting.

Don't throw the running shoes out just yet, though. Researchers say there are other benefits from exercise, like burning excess fat and boosting heart health. So I guess we're not off -- not off the responsibility from exercising just yet.

(WEATHER REPORT)

VELSHI: We're going to come back in a minute. Drew Griffin has this great story about what's going on with the air marshals. Remember, these are the people that we believe are keeping us safe on airplanes when we fly on them. We'll find out something interesting about them when we come back. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Bad news out of the Department of Homeland Security. CNN found some serious issues with the men and women who are supposed to protect you when you fly. Here's our Drew Griffin with our Special Investigations Unit.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Federal Air Marshals' mission -- protect America's commercial aircraft from future terrorist attacks. With a nearly $1 billion budget, how many attempted terrorist attacks have the federal air marshals foiled? None that we've been told about.

They did shoot and kill one man, a person at Miami's airport with mental health issues who claimed to have a bomb in a backpack. As far as arresting terrorists or anyone else...

REP. JOHN J. DUNCAN JR. (R), TENNESSEE: I have the statistics for last year that they've made four arrests for an appropriation over $800 million. That came out to more than $200 million per arrest. It's just ridiculous.

GRIFFIN: So, what's going wrong? Air marshals CNN talked to for this story describe a federal agency in chaos where bored and frustrated air marshals focus more on internal squabbles than watching for bad guys. The marshals asked we not show their faces.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't have managers that provide training or provide leadership or do anything other than produce conflict. How can you say you're protecting the public when you're playing games?

GRIFFIN: Look at this dry erase board in an air marshals' office in Orlando, Florida. CNN was told managers used the board to keep track of how many minority air marshals had been disciplined. Employees told CNN managers were awarding each other scores for their harassment activities.

The Transportation Security Administration says it's investigating and that all employees are entitled to be treated in a fair and lawful manner.

But Orlando's not the only example. All over the country, from Las Vegas to Seattle to Cincinnati, air marshals have filed official complaints, claiming age, gender, and racial discrimination.

In Cincinnati alone, 20 percent of the office filed complaints, according to their lawyer. Six marshals say they were then retaliated against in the workplace with undesirable assignments. Managers allegedly spent nine months at an unknown cost to taxpayers investigating whether one female air marshal had her car registered in the proper state. SHANE SIDEBOTTOM, ATTORNEY REPRESENTING AIR MARSHALS: At the conclusion of that, she was notified that the car in question belonged to a different air marshal, so they were dropping the inquiry. My one month -- almost one-year-old child would probably be better at picking up the phone and dialing the driver's license bureau than these guys are.

GRIFFIN: Then there the story of this woman, a girlfriend now wife of an air marshal who complained to the Department of Homeland Security she was followed, photographed, and investigated by the air marshals, all because, she says, her then-boyfriend had a workman's comp claim.

MEGAN, WIFE OF FEDERAL AIR MARSHALL: Americans' safety is being put on the back burner because, you know, we're 40 miles away from the airport investigating private citizens.

GRIFFIN: Despite repeated requests, the Federal Air Marshals' Service and TSA declined to give CNN an interview. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee believes the air marshal service program, put together hastily after 9/11, now needs to be reinvented.

REP. SHEILA JACKSON-LEE (D), TEXAS: If we've got those kinds of problems, we need to get a ready broom and sweep it out. The only way we'll going to ensure the security and safety of the American people is that we have staff par excellence, and I know they're out there.

GRIFFIN: Drew Griffin, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: All right, we're covering the tea party convention, the first tea party convention. Mary Snow is standing by as the convention gets under way to tell us exactly what's going on, how it's all going to work. There she is waiting to tell us what's going on there.

We're also monitoring President Bill Clinton in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, you see a camera there. He's going to hold a press conference. We'll wait to see what he says. We'll monitor it for you, and if it's something you need to know, we'll bring it to you.

But we're going to go to Mary Snow in a moment to find out whether or not this country is witnessing the birth of a new political party. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right, let's take you over to Nashville right now. A very important thing happening right now. We've been telling you about this. This is the first convention of the tea party movement. This is a movement that is really gaining steam.

We've done a little bit of research into how fast the growth of this movement has been. We found 3,200 websites since February of 2009, so just under a year, containing the word "tea party." They've been registered with godaddy.com, which is the largest Internet web provider.

And 3,200 websites with "tea party" in them, five tea party political action committees have registered with the federal election committee, and there are 600 tickets to this convention in Nashville, and all 600 tickets have been sold out.

Let's go to Mary Snow who has been covering this for us and tell us a bit about what's going on at this convention, what it feels like. Hi, Mary.

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Ali.

And the 600 people have been attending different workshops throughout the day -- "Why Christians must Engage" is the title of one of those workshops, getting women involved, getting young people involved, also how to use sites like Facebook in order to get your message out.

And we've talked to a lot of people who have never been politically involved who came to this convention. But right now we're going to meet Doris Gentry who has been politically involved. She ran for office in 2008. You are a Republican and you ran against a Democrat, and you told me, I had my clocked clean, they beat me good, it was the Obama year.

And now you're here running for reelection, the seat is open in the California state assembly. What have you learned so far that you think you'll take back to Napa, California, where you live?

DORIS GENTRY, CONVENTION ATTENDEE: OK, well, I've learned a lot of things today. We've had the first conference was talking about how to get past fired up and engaged, because the conservative party and the Republican party really supports strongly a Christian platform, biblical standards.

And also, then, we had a conference just now how to get the young people engaged, how to work high school campuses and college campuses and really get young people fired up for traditional conservative values.

SNOW: You told me you're a conservative and you said you have been taking part in various tea party protests in your home state. What are your impressions now? You've met hundreds of people who are at this convention, you paid to come to this convention here in Nashville? Your impressions?

GENTRY: My impression is they're fired up, and they are grassroots, and they're mommies, and they care about their home and their families and their kids. And people are really passionate about taxation and worried about the future. So this is a great opportunity for us to get together and build on our ideas.

SNOW: Doris Gentry, thank you very much for joining us.

GENTRY: Thank you. SNOW: And Ali, throughout the day, there are workshops and also speeches. The keynote speaker is going to be former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who is going to be here tomorrow night. Ali?

VELSHI: And of course, we'll have that on TV. Mary, you've covered a lot of politics, you've been in lot of rooms that have been very, very heated politically. Does this feel like a convention? Does it feel like a political environment? Does it feel like a get- together? What's it feeling like?

SNOW: A little bit of a hybrid of both of a get-together and convention. You know, this is -- the tone here is not the same as it is in the tea party protests that you'd seen. One of the organizers said this is a maturing of the movement.

There's a lot of practical information being given to people in terms of organizing, but in terms of what -- you know, there's no one clear message.

VELSHI: Right.

SNOW: And people here that we've spoken to have a lot of different messages. And as you mentioned, there are so many different tea party movements. So yet to be determined exactly the unified message that comes out of here when this is over.

VELSHI: All right. Maybe next time we see you, you'll show us some of the t-shirts that they're telling. There must be something good. Conventions are always good for t-shirts with slogans on them.

SNOW: Very colorful ones.

VELSHI: Exactly. Mary, good to see. Mary Snow at the tea party convention in Nashville.

When we come back, we'll speak to Mark Skoda. He's central to the tea party movement. And we'll talk to him about whether it's a movement or a political party or a protest. Let's find out exactly what the people who have organized it think about what's happening there in Nashville. Stay with us.

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VELSHI: Just be clear that's our music, superimposed upon the tea party. That's not their theme.

Let's talk to Mark Skoda. He's a spokesperson for the tea party convention, he's a founder of the Memphis tea party. Tomorrow he's a panelist in a session called "Where is the tea party going from here. Where is it headed?" Mark, thank you for being with us.

MARK SKODA, MEMPHIS TEA PARTY CHAIRMAN AND FOUNDER: Thank you.

VELSHI: I talked to Mary Snow there. I've been to a couple of tea party rallies, and they do not feel and they did not feel what it looks like you're at right now. Tell me what's different about this from these rallies that have grown in number across the country over the past year.

SKODA: I think fundamentally what's different is the rallies tended to be a visceral reaction, emotion. You saw a lot of animated people. You saw people dressing up. You saw a lot of anxiousness and perhaps even sometimes angriness.

I think what's different about this convention is that we have people who are behaving like adults in the sense that they are looking to figure out what skills they need to organize, to provide leadership, and ultimately to action the political process at their local level.

VELSHI: And Mary was talking about that. Some of the seminars seem very practical, how to use social networking and how to motivate youth.

What's supposed to happen out of this? I know you're talking about it at a panel but is this going to become a political party? Is it going to become a mature movement? What is it?

SKODA: I would tell you the movement is indeed maturing. I don't believe, and I don't believe anybody here believes a third party makes sense. But what clearly is beginning to occur is people are engaging for the first time.

In fact, in the Memphis tea party, 90 percent of the members had never participated in a political activist movement. They are learning how to be leaders, they're learning how to organize. They are learning how to frankly get the vote out and ultimately elect candidates who reflect their values.

As you know, today Barack Obama said don't pay attention to CNN, FOX News. Pass it through a reconciliation process, the health care process. They don't want their leaders now listening to them. I think that's the change.

VELSHI: Here's the interesting thing, though, most of the people who we talked to who are attendees who paid the $549 for a ticket tend to be, as you say, either not attached to a political party, or they tend to be disaffected conservatives and Republicans.

Are you not just going to split the conservative or Republican vote, thereby allowing the administration greater power?

SKODA: No, absolutely not. I think, as I shared today in the keynote speech, I said you have to declare yourself at some point in time. We have two political parties that can win in this country, Democrat or Republican. If Michael Steele was so smart that he could co-opt this movement or in fact start it, he would have already done so.

The truth of the matter is the localized view of how we action ourselves and how we motivate behaviors in our communities and ultimately how we elect people to represent us once they're in office, whether it's Republican or Democrat, but largely Republican. At the end of the day, it's the old Jesse James' question, why do you rob banks? That's where the money is. Why do you associate with the Republican Party? Because that's where the conservatives are.

VELSHI: What do you do as you're maturing to deal with those fringe elements that are part of the tea party movement?

SKODA: I think the good news about any movement is that you are going to have people who are on the fringe, who as the movement matures and becomes more capable, that they seem disaffected. This is just the reality. I think in the Democrat and Republican parties both we see people who are disaffected.

The tea party movement, which is not really a party, but it is a group of people who are concerned about their country, I think is changing that. I ultimately believe that people will come into the fold of this idea of action and electing people who will represent them.

VELSHI: Mark, good to talk to you. Thanks very much. We're following this with great interest. It's obviously interesting to see how a new movement does mature. Mark Skoda is the spokesman for the tea party convention and he's the founder of the Memphis tea party.

We're also following a big story going on all through the mid- Atlantic right now. Chad Myers is at our Severe Weather Center. Reynolds Wolf is out there in the snow. We're tracking it with both of them.

We'll be back right after this, and we're going to tell you what's going on with your flights, with your weather, with your snow, and reports of how you're supposed to deal with this over the course of the next couple of days. Stay with us.

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VELSHI: For those of you who like the weather, by the way, who aren't afraid of the cold, one of our correspondents gets a lesson in Luge in Germany. We will show you that when we come back.

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