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Fast Moving Wildfire in Santa Cruz; Tricks to Getting Final Extension on Unemployment Claims; Retail Sales Fall Flat; New Attacks Threatening Security Ahead Afghanistan Elections; New Offensive in Southern Afghanistan; Record Month of Foreclosures; Viewers Sound Off About Rick Pitino; More Americans Turning to Free Health Clinics; Rumors Swirling Around Health Care Reform; Foreclosure Packs One-Two Punch as Banks Walk Away From Seized Homes
Aired August 13, 2009 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. Checking stories that are happening right now.
Thousands of mourners are expected to attend today's wake for Eunice Kennedy Shriver at Massachusetts Church. Shriver was the sister of President John F. Kennedy and she founded the Special Olympics. She died Tuesday at the age of 88.
Federal authorities are calling their bust of a marriage immigration ring one of the biggest ever with 50 people charge include illegal immigrants and the U.S. citizens that they married. This ring was based in Cincinnati but reached all over the country. Authorities say the illegal immigrants paid fees for the shame marriages and not the mention the documents that came with them.
A former aide to Bill Clinton is expected to turn herself in after a bench warrant was issued for her arrest. Betsy Wright is accused of smuggling contraband including a Swiss Army knife and a box cutter into an Arkansas prison. It's a death row prison interestingly enough. Wright was Clinton's chief of staff when he was governor of the state.
A fast-moving wildfire has grabbed our attention this morning. We have been watching it for you since early this morning around day break. It's near Santa Cruz, California, just south of San Francisco. There's the map that we prepped for you.
Right now hundreds of residents have been told to get going, to leave almost everything behind, if they have to. So they can escape the fire. Last hour we talked to one fire official and he told me that they're sending in strike teams now to try to tackle this fire.
Our Rob Marciano has been watching the fire for us this morning. Rob, that official said, watch out for the onshore flow winds because that could change the game. What does that mean?
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, usually that helps the game, but in this particular case, it's not going to be quite strong enough to bring in a lot of moisture to knock down the humidity or raise the humidity and knock down some of those flames. So, what it's going to do for the firefighters is change the direction, that's what he was worried about.
Let's go a little bit further inland here and check out. This is north of the Santa Cruz, south of San Francisco, up in the mountains, it's kind of an area mountains where there's a bit of a valley but surrounded by, in many cases, Redwood Forests. When you're talking about -- when you're talking about winds here, you can see them blowing the flames there.
Winds typically off the ocean would bring the humidity up and that's good but it's not going to be quite a strong enough push to really knock down the flame. So it will just change the direction from a north to south direction which is what happened last night and made pretty gusty winds last night and you can see the eastern plank of that smoke being lit up by the rising sun on the east.
Right now, we have a north to south wind as indicated by that smoke and later on today they anticipate a bit of a more northwest or maybe west wind which would push that smoke and flame a little bit farther inland. So, here it is back on the map, Rick. Right now we have this kind of wind and we're looking for more of this kind of wind. Folks in Santa Cruz have even seen some ash, not only smelling smoke but they've seen some ash here.
So, once this wind switches here, it's going to bring that fire a little bit more inland and when that happens, there's a few areas that are a little bit more populated. We don't have any rain or clouds here on the satellite imagery, again, just that onshore wind that will change the direction. No rain in the forecast, Rick. And marginally raising the humidity with this onshore push today. But it's not going to be a strong one where you get a lot of fog.
In many cases in this part of the world, those redwoods will get -- actually grab the fog and will create their own rain or drizzle. It's not going to be that strong enough of an onshore push. It will be just strong enough to change direction of the flames and that's one of the things they'll be having to deal with today.
SANCHEZ: We'll watch it. We'll watch it. I know you will, too. Rob Marciano there taking command of things for us at command central. Thanks so much.
MARCIANO: You bet.
SANCHEZ: From fire lines now to the front lines. We're talking to Americans about health care, about politics and about the economy. Look, this is news unfiltered.
Chief business correspondent Ali Velshi is aboard the CNN Express. He's taking the pulse of the people, not the pundits, not the politicians, and this hour we find him in Missouri. He's at the state fair. Ali, what did you find out there?
ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, this just happened. But these two women were passing by and they have identical T-shirts that say grilled cheese and banana sandwiches, don't knock it until you try it. So you know, what I'm going to be doing right after I'm finished talking. Thank you for stopping by and I'll have mine in just a few minutes. Nice to meet you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nice to meet you.
VELSHI: Rick, we just pulled into the Missouri State Fair. I said Iowa earlier because I'm ahead of myself. We're heading there later. This fair is not even officially open yet. People are just coming in and we've been on the CNN Express all week talking to people about health care and about the economy and how they're doing.
And we're getting a lot of opinions and those opinions as I've talked to you about earlier in the week are very civil. People are in disagreement about health care coverage and they're certainly in disagreement about whether or not this recession is over as some newspapers have been reporting, prominent economists talking about. Rick.
SANCHEZ: You know, that's interesting, economists seem to be saying the recession is over, but are the people feeling that? I mean, when my wife and I prepare to go to the grocery store or to the mall...
VELSHI: Yes.
SANCHEZ: We're impacted by what we see on the business channels and what we hear people saying on networks. What are you hearing from people out there?
VELSHI: I'm getting mixed feeling. I would say most people are not feeling it. The reason for that is this recession has been deep, it has been long. It has really cut people's house values down and that means they don't have money to get if they want to refinance their house. It certainly is taking a toll on the stock market, even though we've seen that market up so much since March.
But ultimately, Rick, the problem is jobs. Everybody knows somebody who is out of a job or who has lost a job and everybody keeps telling us, we're not going to be seeing job creation for several months down the road. So, where you feel it, it doesn't seem to affect you. Most people we've talked to have said they're not feeling the recovery yet. We've talked to some people, particularly real estate agents who say that the low mortgage rates and the fact that home prices are still so low are encouraging buyers. They're actually seeing real buyers.
But it's going to be some time before people see a recovery. Remember one thing, if this recovery has bottomed out, if this is the bottom, if this is the flattening out, then it is the worst point in the recovery, it's not going to feel good, but what will happen is you'll start to get a feeling that things are improving and maybe that will help people's psychology out a little bit more. Rick.
SANCHEZ: One word of advice to you, Ali -- try the deep fried pickles.
VELSHI: I'm going to try the deep fried everything and I'll be talking about that with you later on, Rick. SANCHEZ: Everything is deep fried at a fair. Ali, thanks so much. We'll get back with you.
New numbers, new worries on the economy. This morning we learn that retail sales took an unexpected dip. Sales other than cars that is fell 0.1 percent. That's far below the expected gain of the 0.7 percent. These are grim numbers that underscore concerns about the strength and the staying power of this recession.
558,000 Americans filed first-time jobless claims last week. It's an increase from the previous week, but actually getting those benefits is no simple matter, just what you need to know.
CNNmoney.com's Poppy Harlow.
POPPY HARLOW, CNNMONEY.COM: CNNmoney.com, Rick.
SANCHEZ: I'll do this again. Ready. CnNNmoney.com's Poppy Harlow.
You know what my journalism professor used to call that? A freight train phrase, to be avoided by writers at all times. What do you got for us, Poppy?
HARLOW: Well, it's very complicated. We got worse than expected numbers when we look at those unemployment claims this week and what you need to know is that in every state you're going to be eligible for those 26 weeks but then it changes, Rick, when you look at the extension. And it changes from about, say, about 79 weeks in Michigan where you got the highest unemployment in the country to 46 weeks in the state of Utah.
So, those two extensions all depend on where you live. That's what you need to know. Getting the final extension can be really tricky. That's what we found out. We talked to folks at the National Employment Law Project and they said listen, the rules are crazy and they actually estimate, Rick, that only half of the people that should be getting those unemployment benefits are actually receiving them.
That's a big problem in this recession. One example, every week you've got to prove that you've looked for work in three different places to qualify. How do you do that? You can do that on-line, you can do it over the phone, but if you have a claim that is a little different and needs some explaining, apparently, it can take hours and hours to get through to someone.
A little bit of good news, Rick, the situation is improving somewhat because the unemployment offices got $500 million in support from the stimulus bill. So they're staffing up a little bit more. But it's a tricky process.
SANCHEZ: What else could it possibly delay or jeopardize people's benefits?
HARLOW: We asked folks, we put a question on my Facebook page and ask them what they thought.
Sherry wrote in to us. She talked to us about getting laid off from a defense contracting job. Let me read in what she said because this was her problem. She said "I was able to accept a much lower paying job but by the time I paid health insurance, taxes, gasoline to get to work, I was actually making less than unemployment. Now I'm worried, I'm going to be kicked off unemployment because I left that job. So she left the job and now she's worried she won't get the unemployment. Because she was making more on unemployment.
It's a problem a lot of folks are facing. She could lose her unemployment because of it, legally. When you file a claim, your previous employer, they're notified, Rick, and every time they can challenge it and you can't get unemployment if you've been fired or if you quit. So employers pay money taxes every month into that unemployment fund. That's what funds this. So they can dispute any claim.
And what we're hearing from the experts about 25 percent of any claims that go in, they're challenged. That's a big issue. The process delays the benefits. You have to have an arbitrator. They have to investigate it. So the bottom line, file immediately when you lose your job because there's a lot of glitches in the system that you need to know about, Rick.
SANCHEZ: And that was Poppy Harlow. Thanks, Poppy. Appreciate it.
HARLOW: Sure.
SANCHEZ: Check out the Dow by the way, the latest numbers are looking like that right now. Down 30 points. At least at this point. We'll continue to check it, though. It's early in the day, we know.
U.S. Marines under fire in southern Afghanistan. A new assault against Taliban militants.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: Welcome back. I'm Rick Sanchez in the CNN NEWSROOM.
There are new attacks threatening security ahead of next week's elections in Afghanistan. Fourteen civilians killed in two bomb blasts in southern Afghanistan. Three of the victims were children. Officials blame the Taliban militants. A roadside bomb also killed a U.S. soldier.
Meanwhile, hundreds of U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers are part of a very new offensive in southern Afghanistan. The goal to keep the Taliban from interfering with the elections.
More now from CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Up close with Marines on the front lines.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's good to get out here.
STARR: Part of Operation Eastern Resolve II, the third major push this summer into the dangerous and lucrative center of Afghanistan's drug trade. 400 U.S. Marines and 100 Afghan troops jumped Taliban lines in helicopters to take the town of Dahaneh (ph) in Helmand province. The first time U.S. troops have entered the strategic city.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dahaneh is one of the key towns in the area. All the smaller towns are dependent on Dahaneh, for example, this is where the bazaar is.
STARR: The Marines are part of the extra 21,000 extra troops President Obama ordered up earlier this year. Their immediate mission, break the Taliban's hold on the city and free residents to vote in next week's election.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's to the right of the wall right there.
STARR: The Taliban have called for a boycott and threatened to ruin the election which the U.S. concedes is a challenge.
RICHARD HOLBROOKE, SPECIAL U.S. REP. TO AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN: Holding an election in a war-time situation is always difficult, but a government needs legitimacy and this election was called for under the constitution.
STARR: In Dahaneh, commanders predict a few more days of intense fighting before the town is secured.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: And there's Barbara now live, joining us. Is there a possibility that we're going to see more troops going into Afghanistan, Barbara?
STARR: Well, you know, Rick, that's really the question a lot of people are considering. What are we at right now? About 68,000 U.S. troops and every indication is that General Stan McChrystal, the new commander in Afghanistan will, in fact, ask for more troops.
Maybe some specialty troops. So troops especially trained to go after those IEDs, intelligence, reconnaissance troops, maybe reposition some troops. Move them out of those remote mountain areas and get them into these populated areas.
SANCHEZ: Where are we going to get these troops from? We hear stories every day about how overworked our military is...
STARR: That is the question.
SANCHEZ: They're still in Iraq, right? I mean, am I crazy here or is that a question that should be asked? STARR: That is the question. No, Rick, you are not crazy. It's a very tough situation for these young U.S. troops in the field. They are still in Iraq. They are scheduled to draw down to reduce troop levels in Iraq, but that's going to take time. They can draw down there, move some to Afghanistan, but there's an even bigger complication, which is Defense Secretary Robert Gates is very unsettled about the prospect of too many U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Remember, the Soviets had, what? 100,000 or better and they still didn't win there and the real thinking is that they can't let those troop levels get too high because it won't do any good, but they still don't have enough right now. Very delicate balance to get it right. Rick.
SANCHEZ: Well, it is tough. And you know, your heart goes out to these guys that are trying to do the right thing, but there are some tough decisions that need to be made there.
Great stuff, as usual, from our Pentagon correspondent. Barbara, appreciate it.
STARR: Sure.
SANCHEZ: To really understand what is going on over there in Afghanistan and why we're even there, you need to watch some of the specials that we got coming your way. We want you to watch Christiane Amanpour's documentary. It's called "Generation Islam." This is going to be a two-hour special and it's tonight right here on CNN. I recommend it at 9:00 Eastern.
Still in the region, Pakistani helicopters have been pounding several Taliban commander bases near the Afghan border. Intelligence officials say at least a dozen militants have been killed so far and several bases and hideouts have been destroyed.
This assault comes as government forces turn up the heat following last week's reported death of Pakistan's Taliban chief. Officials say they believe he was killed in a U.S. missile strike. But Taliban commanders are denying that the man was killed. We'll be staying on top of that for you.
Also a shot in the arm to fight a disease. An update on one vaccine that has some parents saying, no way.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: This is something a lot of parents don't know a lot about and especially men, men in particular. So let's pay attention, guys. Lots of us are getting ready to send our kids back to school, including our daughters, as in my case. Some have already headed back to school.
Now, vaccinations are probably on most parents' to-do list, but there's one vaccine that's got a lot of parents saying, no. Or just say no. Our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here with the details. What vaccine are we talking about? What does it do and what does it prevent?
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: We're talking about a vaccine called Gardasil and what it does is it can prevent several types of HPV, which is the virus that can cause cervical cancer. Right, so who wouldn't want a vaccine that can keep your kid from getting cancer later in life? But I've been talking to a lot of parents and actually a fair number of pediatricians too who are hesitant to give this at the time that the CDC says to.
The Centers for Disease Control says give it to your 11 or 12 year old girl. This is a sexually transmitted disease, remember, and a relatively new vaccine. So, many of the parents I've talked to said, look my 11-year-old is not having sex. This is a relatively new vaccine. We don't necessarily know everything about it and so a lot of parents are asking not to get it, even though the CDC says get it. So let me show you a little vote.
SANCHEZ: OK. Go ahead.
COHEN: We did a vote online. I know you love online stuff.
SANCHEZ: I love online.
COHEN: You love that stuff.
SANCHEZ: The Twitter king.
COHEN: That's right, exactly.
So here's a vote. And we tweeted it, too. Here's a vote where we asked parents, do you want to get the HPV vaccine from your doctor? 43 percent said absolutely, 40 percent said no way and 17 percent said not sure. This is over 6,000 people voting. It's not scientific but that's certainly a lot of people. It's interesting, I mean, to have 40 something percent, 40 percent say no to something the CDC recommends. That's a pretty high number.
SANCHEZ: Help me understand what you just said. The vaccine actually gives you a disease?
COHEN: No.
SANCHEZ: It's an immunization.
COHEN: No, the vaccine can help prevent many cases of cervical cancer, not all cancer.
SANCHEZ: Which are caused...
COHEN: By a virus.
SANCHEZ: A virus.
COHEN: Correct. Right.
SANCHEZ: Which can be gotten by intercourse. COHEN: Right. Exactly. Men give it to women.
SANCHEZ: So the argument is from a lot of parents, I'm not going to give my daughter something which protects her against something that she's not allowed to have.
COHEN: That's one of the concerns that somehow you're encouraging girls to have sex by saying, don't worry, you probably won't get cervical cancer if you get this shot. But the concern that I heard more was about side effects of vaccines. Vaccines can have side effects.
SANCHEZ: Right.
COHEN: And the more kids you give it to, you know, every year more kids get it, the more you're going to see side effects come out. So, you can actually, in our story, today on cnn.com we have a link to a CDC web site that lists all the things that have happened to girls and women after they've received this vaccine.
Now, it doesn't mean that the vaccine caused it, but, certainly these things give parents some pause.
SANCHEZ: But as a dad I should consider this. My wife and I should sit down. We should watch your report and do the research.
COHEN: Right. You should take a look at it. I know some parents who spent hours on the internet before getting their daughter this shot. But let's take a look at some things -
SANCHEZ: OK.
COHEN: ... that have happened to the girls and women after receiving this shot. Neurological disorders, blood clots even death after receiving Gardasil. Now, to be extremely clear Merck, which makes Gardasil, and the CDC says, yes, these things may have happened, possibly after someone got the shot, but how do you know that the shot caused it? Maybe that girl was going to get a blood clot anyhow. So, it's important to keep that in mind.
SANCHEZ: Gardasil So, what do pediatricians say?
COHEN: You know, it was interesting. I talked to several pediatricians who said, look, when parents come in for a polio vaccine or meningitis or whatever I tell them, you're getting this. You need to have this. But for this, they're giving parents a little more leeway. They're saying if you don't want it, I'm not going to argue with you. If you want to wait a couple of years, I'm not going to argue with you. So they're sort of treating it a little bit differently from the pediatricians I've talked to.
SANCHEZ: And tomorrow is going to be "Empower Me Friday," and people can contribute to this, right?
COHEN: That's right.
SANCHEZ: This is a whole thing about engaging the audience.
COHEN: Exactly. We would like to engage our audience by having you send an e-mail to empoweredpatient@cnn.com. Every Friday, we do "Empower Me Friday" where we answer your questions and I should also say this Gardasil column I've been talking about, cnnhealth.com. That's where you're going to find it.
SANCHEZ: CNNhealth.com.
COHEN: Right. So parents need to go and try to make a good decision for their daughter.
SANCHEZ: I just screwed up the intro to Poppy Harlow. It's CNNmoney.com. So I'm going to get this one right. CNNhealth.com. There you go. Thanks so much.
COHEN: Thanks.
SANCHEZ: Always good to see you.
A free health clinic, overwhelmed and forced to turn the patients away. Who are the people who rely on this as their lifeline? You know, the answer to this may surprise you.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: We welcome you back. The nation's housing crisis. We are talking about yet another month of record foreclosures. The private firm Realty Track says 360,000 homeowners received the dreaded notices last month.
Christine Romans is part of the CNN Money team and she joins us now from New York to bring us up to date on what's going on. Look, this thing is going to be going on for some time.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
SANCHEZ: We're not going to be over - it's not going to be over in like a couple of months just because a bunch of people were foreclosed on last year, right?
ROMANS: Oh, you're absolutely right. I mean, look, this whole picture just shows how fragile any kind of recovery is going to be. You get a retail sales number that was surprisingly week down 0.1 percent. People have been expecting a gain there for retail sales. But think about it, Rick. Did you spend more money in July than you did in June?
I mean, many Americans are still being cautious because of the foreclosure situation and because of the job situation. They're not spending more money because they either can't or because they don't want to. They want to shore up their family finances as they figure what the rest of this recession and subsequent recovery is going to look like.
So, retail sales down 0.1 percent. Sales, if you strip out autos and even worse, down 0.6 percent. Cash for clunkers, though, up 2.4 percent So, you saw that where the consumer was doing some work was on the clunkers business. But, look, would you be spending more money, would the consumer be spending more money if you got this foreclosure crisis. If down the street you see more houses being foreclosed on as we know from this Realty Track numbers is the trend here.
360,000 properties given some form of foreclosure filing in the month of July. That's a record. It's up seven percent from June. It's up a whopping 32 percent from July 2008. We know that the mortgage, the mortgage holders, the servicers have been unwilling or have been slow to rewrite and modify a lot of these, a lot of these loans. And so, people are still foreclosing on these properties and it's still the same old problem spot.
It's Florida. It's Nevada. It's California. Record levels there across the board, I mean, Nevada 1 in 56 properties have been foreclosed on. We ran the numbers and it's something like 2,400 homes are foreclosed on, a padlock at the door, owned by the bank every single day in July on average.
I mean, think of that. That's 2,400 families, boom, whose home has been foreclosed on. So you can see why there's the nervousness about that situation and we just haven't been able to figure out how to slow that trend and, frankly, there's some economists who say it maybe shouldn't be slow and there are people -- there is a very fundamental shift happening here. You had overbuilding and overdevelopment in some areas, and now this is the shakeout and it's going to be painful.
SANCHEZ: Some good news on the horizon, though. I've been hearing from some of the people...
ROMANS: I'm all ears.
SANCHEZ: ... that you talk to all the time that maybe sometime in the fall, maybe winter we're going to see some quantifiable differences in the economy. Just hearing that as a consumer, not as a news anchor, but just as a consumer, it makes me feel good and makes me want to go ahead and take my wife and kids out for dinner that Friday night.
ROMANS: Look, the panic is passed. I think we can agree on that. That's something. We've been seeing that for a while. Now that the panic is passed. I was talking to CEOs yesterday -- interview with nine CEOs yesterday, and they said that panic part of this is over. Now we're making decisions and we're moving ahead, people are starting to think about hiring. There's a survey by Watson Wyatt Worldwide that said that some of these companies who have had hiring freezes for the last year, they're now talking about unfreezing those plans so that they can start hiring in the next year if they need to again.
You're seeing things start to loosen up. You're absolutely right. We held these Wal-Mart numbers, though. These Wal-Mart second quarter results that show same-store sales at Wal-Mart, Rick, fell 1.2 percent. Part of that reason might be that people might want to take their wife or husband out for dinner and might want to go and buy something, but they can't charge it on the card anymore. They physically don't have the money to do the spending, and that's what we have to see.
We have to see the people who can get out there and start doing a little bit of activity in the economy, feel better and more confident enough to do that and then, of course, the restaurants, the department stores, the gas stations, they all employ people.
SANCHEZ: Well, I'm confident. So, you know what? I'll say it right here, honey, if you're watching, Friday, we're going to McDonald's after the show.
ROMANS: No, Rick, no, no, no, no.
SANCHEZ: What? What's wrong with that?
ROMANS: Take her to McDonald's tonight and take her someplace else tomorrow.
(LAUGHTER)
SANCHEZ: I had a feeling you would react that way. Call my wife. You guys are the same. Thanks so much. We'll catch up a little bit later.
More Americans now are out of work, out of options, in some cases and they're turning to health care. A closer look at the big lines and the big problems that free clinics.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SANCHEZ: I was on my way home from work last night and on my way home to work this morning. And all I heard on the radio, especially on sports stations, was this Rick Pitino story that seems to be grabbing the attention of so many Americans. Let me tell you what's going on with Rick Pitino. If you don't know, here it is.
Pitino is certainly one of the best-known basketball coaches in the country, but should the university of Louisville coach get a pass on what is being described as a salacious scandal that he is now involved in? I was going to say embroiled in. I guess both. The married father of five said he had sex with a woman at a restaurant right there, in public, at a restaurant or in the open, we should say. But it happened six years ago.
The woman apparently got pregnant, he has paid her $3,000. Now, she is facing trial for allegedly trying to extort $10 million from him. She has pleaded not guilty. University officials say they were surprised to hear the story, but they haven't made any decisions on what they're going to do next about Rick Pitino. Best-selling author, best-dressed man in America, all that stuff.
Why is she taking the heat more than him, some of our viewers are asking. Also, why is he, unlike other sports figures that we talked about, athletes like Michael Vick, for example, not immediately losing his job? There's a lot of variables in the opinions on this.
First of all, let's check Heidi's blog. On this one: "All I know is Pitino is not blameless in all of this, and I have serious questions about the effect his influence could have on his players. Many coaches are looked up to as role models. So, do we want potential future NBA millionaires growing up believing that this kind of behavior is acceptable and in some ways rewarded?"
All right, now let me go over to my Twitter page and show you another opinion that's, oh, probably a little different than that one. Let's see if I can get that one up. There it is. Look at this one right here in the middle from Kaylee. "The coach was a pig, but having consensual sex and then paying for her to terminate it is not a crime. Extortion is."
So, there you have it. Two comments on one story. We'll continue to filter your comments, by the way, and share them with viewers, as well.
We want to look at this now. The health care crisis looked at from a completely different angle. More unemployed Americans are now turning to free health clinics. And in growing numbers. They're being turned away. Who are the people who are relying on this services, and what happens to them now?
Sheri Wood faces that overwhelming demand at the Kansas City Free Health Clinic and served as the president of the National Association of Free Clinics. Let me just take you through your experiences. Tell us, we hear about these 47 to 50 million Americans who have no insurance in this country. You deal, I imagine, with some of these people every day. Who are they? What are their needs? Tell us about them.
SHERI WOOD, PRESIDENT, BOARD OF NATIONAL ASSOC. OF FREE HEALTH CLINICS: We do deal with this every day. These are people just like you and me that just happen just not to have health insurance. Most of them are people that work and are now really trying just to make the ends meet and take care of themselves and their families.
SANCHEZ: What do they come in for?
WOOD: They come in for everything from hypertension to diabetes, we have HIV patients, we have people that are coming in from for behavioral health assistance that are really dealing with a lot of stress and issues that are affecting them in how they can go through their daily life.
SANCHEZ: A lot of people would argue, look, when you hear people say there are 47 million Americans uninsured, that means they're uninsured. That doesn't mean they don't get health care. Any one of those people who's going to your clinic can walk into an emergency room anywhere in the United States and get indigent care, right? So, what is the difference?
WOOD: Right. What we're trying to do is keep people out of that emergency room because that costs everyone money if that happens. You can figure about $1,000 out of your premium for health insurance is going to cover the uninsured. If we can take care of them when they're not as sick and it costs less plus it's much less stressful for them, then it's a lot better for everyone.
SANCHEZ: So, what you're saying is, having clinics like yours -- in this case, they're free and I imagine someone has to take the burden of them. But in the future, the government might be involved in something like this. In the end, it makes health care cheaper because of prevention. Is that what I hear you saying?
WOOD: Absolutely. Most free clinics do a lot of prevention work. We run diabetic support groups so that we can help people learn about their nutrition. We really want to help them take care of themselves, and we get people back in for routine checkups so that we try to prevent the onset of some of the chronic diseases that cost everybody so much money and so hard for people individually to deal with.
SANCHEZ: Would you like for the Obama administration is to come up with a plan that puts you out of business?
WOOD: That would be wonderful. But even with all the plans circulating, there are still going to be people that are uninsured. Right now, with 47 million people in this country that are uninsured, even with the plan, it would leave about 10 million people that are still going to need care.
SANCHEZ: Sherry Wood, you're fabulous. Thank you so much for taking time to take us through this. We appreciate it.
WOOD: Absolutely
SANCHEZ: Part of the health care debate has turned downright morbid in some places. All this talk about setting up a panel to decide who shall live and who shall die. "Death panels" they were called by the former governor of Alaska.
Here is our Josh Levs to take us through this on the -- I said this to Sanjay Gupta, but I'm embarrassed as a news anchor to have to ask you whether there actually is a plan that the president of the United States supports that would decide who should live and who should die.
JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You're in a position of knowing the answer. Unfortunately, there are so many rumors out there that we need to tackle them. You know the drill. And I'm sure you're getting things on the Twitter and on the blog from people. We're getting a lot of questions. Are these things true? This is what they want to know.
Let me show you. The death panel has been thrown out there, but hearing similar arguments in various ways. Look at one woman said in an event for Arlen Specter the other day at town hall.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What it says is, as a 74-year-old man, if you develop cancer, we're pretty much going to write you off because you're no longer a working citizen who will be paying taxes.
SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (D), PENNSYLVANIA: Well, you're just not right. Nobody, 74, is going to be written off because they have cancer. That's a vicious, malicious, untrue rumor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVS: And a lot of the complaints we're hearing, people who are concerned about this rumor, are pretty much surrounding the same topic. They're concerned that governmental bureaucracy will make decisions purely about money rather than ethics and life, and they don't want to see that happen.
Now, let me talk to you a little bit about where this comes from, and I will give you our ruling on this. Let's go to this. A few key points about this. Now, there is the House bill. A thousand pages long -- I'm going to show you a link to it. It would require Medicare to cover consultations about advanced care. But what you see on the next one here, these consultations even themselves are not required. When you really drill in and look at this, honestly, the answer is very simple.
Here's our verdict from the CNN Truth Squad, simply false. There is nothing like a death panel anywhere in there. It is a rumor and isn't accurate and has nothing to do with what's in the bill. And I want you all to see this. You don't just have to take my word for it. Zoom in here for a second. I posted links for you, first of all, CNNpolitics.com has the Truth Squad going. Over here, CNN.com/josh. Just top in my name. CNN.com/josh. All these thinks will help you get the facts, and I included a link to the 1,000-page bill that people are grabbing lines out of and giving their own meanings to.
And this over here is incredibly long and if you want to spend hours digging through it, I encourage you to take a look. This could be a bill that might ultimately be voted on, but you know what? It also might not. We still have to wait and get all these merged bills together into one place. And in the meantime, check out CNNpolitics.com, Rick, and the Truth Squad will keep tackling these things as they keep popping up all the time.
SANCHEZ: I want you to take on this unbelievable controversy that's out there tomorrow after you tackled this one on whether or not the earth is flat. Can you Truth Squad that for us?
(LAUGHTER)
LEVS: Yes, some things aren't worth our time.
SANCHEZ: Am I being a smart aleck? Persnickety?
LEVS: Maybe you're a little persnickety today. But apparently, that's a good thing. You know what? People, tweet him and tell him if he's being a good or bad kind of persnickety today. I like it. SANCHEZ: No, tweet him. All right, thanks a lot, Josh.
Talk, talk, talk. Former vice president Dick Cheney reportedly says that president George W. Bush wasn't listening. According to "The Washington Post," Cheney felt Bush turned away from his advice during their second term in office. The Post goes on to say the Cheney revelation came during discussions for his memoir, which is due out 2011. The newspaper says that Mr. Bush, quote, "showed an independence that Cheney just didn't see coming." Stop quote.
A former aide to President Bill Clinton is expected to turn herself in after a bench warrant was issued for her arrest. Betsy Wright, remember her? She is now accused of smuggling contraband, including a Swiss Army knife and box cutter into an Arkansas prison, a death row prison. Wright was Clinton's chief of staff when he was governor of the state of Arkansas.
Crews using zip lines to save lives. This is amazing video. Take a look at this. Rescuers suspend ropes over raging rivers to carry typhoon survivors to safety. This is makeshift, by the way. See, that's just a chair they got out of somebody's front porch. We're showing you what's happening as it comes into us today from Taiwan.
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SANCHEZ: Welcome back. I'm Rick Sanchez, and it's time to shoot the whale. What does shooting the whale mean? Well, you must not watch at 3:00 from time to time. That's the whale, and that's why we're shooting it. Twitter is over capacity, folks. That means there's a possibility that we've had some topics that we've been discussing this morning that everybody wants to talk about. Certainly that Rick Pitino story. We'll stay on top of it and continue to share your responses.
All right, time to take a look at this. Look at these pictures. Guess what we have just found out. These are live pictures we're getting in from just south of San Francisco. This is KGO, and according to FEMA's Web site, they just declared California's Lockheed fire a natural major disaster.
Ol' Robby Marciano has been watching this all day. The guy, Mr. Farraro, who I was talking to earlier today said, here's the problem. The wind was going this way, but now it's going to go this way, and we have all our trucks and all our gear on this side which means we have to do a flip and get everything -- it sounds like these guys -- these guys got their work cut out for them over the next couple hours, Rob.
MARCIANO: They do, Rick. The terrain they're working in is very rugged. Moving any sort of equipment, you know, even if it's just a few miles away -- it could be tens of miles to get to that particular spot doing the old roundabout.
All right. Satellite imagery trying to show a little bit of onshore push, but I think the push that we're going to see today is more just a change of the wind as opposed to being bringing in a serious amount of moisture that would create the fog, create the mist this area typically gets with a good onshore flow. As far as where the fire is right now, right about here.
Winds have been coming from the north and northwest overnight, and we've seen them gust 15, 20, 25 knots at times. Now, they're worried and we think the winds will become a little more westerly. That's onshore, and that it's good that it brings more moisture but not enough moisture to really knock down the flames.
What it will do is push the flames towards the valley, which is a little bit more highly populated. These are some of the concerns that we're working on across that area. And I'm just looking at these as they kind of come in. Similar pictures that you showed, Rick. This is a vantage point, looks like now they're on the eastern side of the fire because we're seeing the flames lit up from this side -- the smoke. You can see the flames.
SANCHEZ: Yes, I was going to say -- you know, those trees are so tall, it's actually hard to tell exactly what's going on underneath them, right?
MARCIANO: You can see that within those flames on top of the trees, you can see how much the top of the trees are moving so, serious wind happening. And fires when they get large enough can create their own wind but this particular wind looks to be generate synoptically, and it means it is coming in driven by larger forces weatherwise.
Impressive pictures there from KGO, and it does not look to be getting any better for those folks and we'll be updating that throughout the day, no doubt.
All right. They wish they could get some rain that they're getting across the Northeast with rainfall here in an already saturated area. We're looking at the Southeast and also the Northeast. Boy, parts of Virginia got clobbered yesterday with rainfall. Five and six inches in a short amount of time. We already have saturated soils across Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania and southern parts of the Hudson Valley.
And then one piece of good news here. Tropical depression number two, Rick, there it is. Pretty much fizzling to nothing. So, that thing looks to be dying out at this point. And the National Hurricane Center is keeping it as TD as opposed to developing into a tropical storm anytime soon. Back over to you.
SANCHEZ: Rain is good. Generally speaking.
MARCIANO: Generally.
SANCHEZ: Generally speaking, as long as it's not too much. Thank you, Rob. Good stuff. Good explanation.
Take a look at this video from Taiwan. I want to share this with you. This is fascinating. These rescuers have rigged some kind of system where they took a chair from somebody's front porch, tied some ropes to it, and this is how they're getting people to safety. This is pretty remarkable stuff. Ingenious, isn't it?
About 1,000 people have been found alive now in an area around some of the remote villages, and many of them are alive because of this. That's how they were able to get them out of there. Hundreds more are still missing and still feared dead. This typhoon has dumped 80 inches of rain on the island and it's still raining, which is making it harder to get to some of these victims.
A lot of national and local relief organizations are bringing aid to the devastated communities, and if you need their services, we can help you get in touch with some of them. If you'd like to get involved, please visit our "Impact Your World" page. Again, the "Impact Your World" page on CNN's Web site where you'll find more details. That's at CNN.com/impact.
Foreclosure isn't always an end. Sometimes it's just the beginning of the problems for homeowners. And now some banks don't want to deal with taking the home back at all. It leaves homeowners completely holding the bag. The bag of unpaid bills, that is.
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SANCHEZ: Boy, I just want to let you know that we've been getting a ton of responses on the Rick Pitino story. The coach who is now involved in a sex scandal. We have been following it for you, and it probably is the number one story that people have been reacting to. We'll continue it get your thoughts.
Hit by foreclosure and then hit again. That's the reality for some families who are on the losing end as banks try and bail out, fail out, literally. CNN's Alina Cho takes a look at what happens when banks simply walk away.
ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Rick. This is something that frankly surprised a lot of us around here. People whose homes have gone into foreclosure are finding out months, even years later, that the very banks that seized their homes are walking away from them.
It's leaving the homeowner confused and, worse, stuck with thousands of dollars in bills.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHO (voice-over): When Dellian and Valerie Sharp found out the bank was taking possession of their home after they defaulted on their mortgage, they thought it was the worst day of their lives. They were wrong.
DELLIAN SHARP, HOMEOWNER: We could spend 45 days in jail over this housing issue.
CHO (off camera): Does that seem ridiculous to you?
SHARP: It does to me, because it's like, we don't own the house.
CHO (voice-over): They do own it. In November of 2006, a judge agreed the Sharps' home was the bank's property and should be sold at auction. The couple moved out.
But a year later, they learned Bank of America never followed through on the foreclosure. In a statement, B of A told CNN the bank has not foreclosed on the property, and the customer still holds the title. The Sharps are shocked, and the practice is perfectly legal.
JOSIAH MADAR, NYU FURMAN CENTER FOR REAL ESTATE AND URBAN POLICY: A number of the foreclosed properties have little value left in them by the time they're reaching the end of the foreclosure process. And if it's going to be more expensive to follow the foreclosure all the way through and take the property, they just won't do it.
CHO: It's happening in cities across America, banks walking away from so-called toxic titles.
The Sharps are facing thousands of fines from the city of Buffalo, New York for property violations and unpaid taxes. That's on top of the thousands they've already paid in court fees.
Daniel Benning works as a housing court mediator. He calls the vacant homes vulnerable targets.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These are attractive to persons of criminal intent.
CHO (on camera): Because they're empty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're empty. The bank refuses to allow anyone to move in. But they refuse to do anything to the property, as you can see. And it affects not only this property but the properties next to them.
CHO: The City of Buffalo even filed a lawsuit, alleging 37 banks that walked away from foreclosed homes are responsible for the city's loss in property tax revenue and an increase in police and fire costs.
As for the Sharps...
D. SHARP: When you look and you find that something that you thought was gone and is still there, OK, now it's, what's next?
CHO (on camera): Well, what is next?
D. SHARP: We have no idea.
VALERIE SHARP, HOMEOWNER: No idea.
D. SHARP: We have no idea.
V. SHARP: No idea.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHO: Now, as I mentioned, this is happening across America, but hardest hit are Rust Belt cities. Places like Detroit and Flint, Michigan. Buffalo and Cleveland, Ohio. Cities that have older housing stock with declining value. So, the banks simply don't think it's worth their while to pay all the legal and administrative fees that come with foreclosing on a home. So, Rick, they're simply walking away. Rick?
SANCHEZ: Good stuff. Thanks so much for the explanation. I'm Rick Sanchez. CNN NEWSROOM continues now. Hold on to your hats, folks. Put your seat belts on, strap on, it's Tony Harris time.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, doctor.
