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School Speech Controversy; Jobless Rate Jumps to 9.7 Percent; Pilot Helps Timor Children
Aired September 04, 2009 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: It is Friday, September 4th, the start of a long Labor Day weekend. Here are the top stories in the CNN NEWSROOM.
The nation's unemployment rate surges again. It reaches its highest level since the summer of 1983. What and where are the jobs of the future? CNN's town hall with students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Kidney traffickers target the poor, illiterate and mentally disabled, part three of our special investigations unit report, "Secret Harvest."
Good morning, everyone. I'm Tony Harris. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM, where we will quickly get you caught up on the day's hot headlines, then take the time to break down the issues to find out why they really matter.
Leading the way this hour, jobs. The unemployment rate for August pushing closer to 10 percent. The Labor Department says companies eliminated 216,000 net jobs in August. That put the unemployment rate at 9.7 percent. Almost 15 million Americans out of work. We will crunch the numbers with CNN's Susan Lisovicz in just a moment.
The largest wildfire in the history of Los Angeles County is classified as arson today. The person who set the fire will likely face homicide charges for the deaths of two firefighters.
The inferno has marched across almost 150,000 acres. Some five dozen homes burned. Full containment not expected until mid- September.
And this just into CNN. Ten private security guards accused of wrongdoing at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan have been fired or resigned. We're told they are leaving Kabul today.
These images of the contractors in naked orgies, hazing parties and other humiliating activities prompted an investigation. Allegations against them came to light earlier this week when the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The guards worked for the company ArmorGroup North America.
North Korea says it is in the final stage of enriching uranium. Plus, its plutonium enrichment program is now being weaponized. This could give the communist nation two ways to make nuclear bombs. The U.S. special envoy for North Korea is in the region discussing how to bring Pyongyang back to disarmament talks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHEN BOSWORTH, U.S. SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR NORTH KOREA POLICY: I'm not in a position to interpret the North's behavior. There are cycles that it goes through, as we know. We want to basically put the entire relationship on a durable permanent footing, one which is built around a denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but one which has within it opportunities for the improvement of bilateral relationships and progress on some of the regional issues.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: North Korea's official news agency says its government revealed plans to push ahead with nuclear developments in a letter to the U.N. Security Council.
Congress returns next week to dive back into the make-or-break debate over health care reform, and some lawmakers are still getting it from both sides at town hall meetings. More than 1,000 people packed a meeting hosted by Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell yesterday. He tried to counter criticism about a government insurance option.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. BILL PASCRELL (D), NEW JERSEY: Anybody who has told you, or you heard somebody say it, that you're going to have to give up or somebody can take away your insurance, or that the government is going to make a decision for you, is totally wrong. That's not the bill I worked on. I don't know what the heck you're talking about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: OK.
NATO launching an airstrike today on a pair of hijacked fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan. Provincial officials report more than 90 people killed, many of them civilians who had rushed to the scene to collect fuel.
NATO is investigating the incident. The tankers were carrying fuel for coalition troops when they were hijacked. NATO says the military believed there were no civilians near the trucks at the time of the strike. A spokeswoman tells CNN they now know there were civilians there.
The White House calls it a back-to-school pep talk, but a plan by President Obama to deliver a TV and Web address to students has set off a new controversy with conservative critics. Aides say the president will talk about the need to work hard and stay in school during the speech Tuesday.
Some parents applaud the message. Others say they're worried the president is trying to advance his political agenda.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEATHER LUGGETT, PARENT: What is it that the president is challenging me to do, and what new ideas is he asking me to think about? And to me, that means that he might be introducing some of his agenda which, as a conservative parent, I don't agree with.
ROBBI COOPER, PARENT: There's times when messages are not politically based. And I think any time that someone talks about education and kids staying in school, there's no other motivation for that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: OK. This is hot. It is visceral and raising all kinds of questions.
Critics say they're especially concerned about a lesson plan created to go along with the president's speech. The White House says one line in the plan was inartfully worded and has been revised.
That was a focus of debate on CNN's Campbell Brown last night, hosted by John Roberts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM GREER, CHAIRMAN, REPUBLICAN PARTY OF FLORIDA: Up until recently, last night, the White House had lesson plans distributed throughout the country for teachers to talk about how students can help President Obama, the new ideas of President Obama. There was clearly going to be designed some effort to engage the students across this country into the public policy debate.
After the parents across this country and the uproar that occurred, the Department of Education withdrew all of that language last night. The White House reissued its lesson plans, and now they have said they will let parents see the text of the speech. So, I think my concerns and the concerns of parents across this country certainly were substantiated by the scramble that the White House went through last night.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN HOST: In fact, Jim, if I could, just to help folks at home, let's put up what the original text was of this lesson plan, which is what you have an immediate problem with, and how it was amended.
First of all, here's the original lesson plan, which asks students to "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." That was amended now to read, "write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term educational goals. These will be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals..."
So, Roland Martin, was there a bit of a problem there with the additional materials that were provided to go along with the president's speech?
ROLAND MARTIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: No, it's not a problem. What you have is you have some insane parents who want to bring their ideology into the table.
Now, here's what's interesting. Our guest heads the Florida Republican Party. I remember when I was in school, John, the former head of the Texas Republican Party, George Strait, came to my school. Thank God I didn't have some crazy parents saying, oh, no, I want my child to opt out of listening to George Strait because he might indoctrinate my child to become a Republican.
This is about ideology. Why is it -- I mean, I didn't see people sitting here saying when President George W. Bush went to go read to students, oh, I want to see what book he's reading. I want to pull my kid out of the class because I'm a Democrat, he's a Republican.
This is absolute nonsense.
GREER: Well, you see, the example you gave, the parents didn't have an opportunity to decide whether you had to listen to when the chairman came to speak.
MARTIN: Because they shouldn't. It was ridiculous.
GREER: Well, absolutely they -- as a parent -- as a parent -- and I believe parents across this country believe this -- I want to know what my child is going to be taught. I want to know who is teaching it to him. And I want to know what my child is going to be exposed to.
MARTIN: Really?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: OK. As you have just seen, some parents are concerned President Obama's planned webcast next week will be politicized. Pretty heated debate last night on the Campbell Brown show.
What do you think? Go to CNN.com/Tony and leave us a comment. And you have been on this -- I don't even know when we posted this, but you're all over it. Here's some of what we're hearing and seeing.
Louis says, "In January, students at my high school were able to put aside their politics and honor President Obama's inauguration. If kids had the maturity to respect the president of our country, I hope parents can do that now too."
Okay says, "It is not true that schools can justifiably deny access to the broadcast to students. What a lesson in civics."
And John writes, "Tell the president to do something presidential. I am so tired of watching him campaign for his own future, mixing his 'Social Justice' Marxist agenda with propaganda spread to school kids."
There you go, CNN.com/Tony, if you'd like to weigh in.
More Americans are lining up for unemployment payments. We will look at the areas hit hardest.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(WEATHER REPORT)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: You know, almost 15 million Americans want a job today but can't find one. The unemployment rolls swelled in August.
Let's chew on the numbers a bit with Susan Lisovicz at the New York Stock Exchange.
Susan, maybe we just start with you rifling through these numbers, and then I've got a couple of questions for you.
SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK. Well, Tony, we're waking our way through this terrible recession.
The unemployment rate is higher. It's 9.7 percent. It's about double where it was in April a year ago. But, there's another set of numbers that came out today, and that is why Wall Street is rallying, and that is a good reason for encouragement.
The number of jobs lost -- we don't want to see people losing their jobs, but there is no question that those numbers are steadily and dramatically declining. Two hundred and sixteen thousand jobs lost in August, Tony, is a third of what we saw in January, of nearly 750,000. And if this trend continues, one day we will see more sectors adding jobs than shedding them. That day is coming.
HARRIS: So, we've got kind of a mixed look at this.
Which sectors, Susan, are cutting and adding jobs?
LISOVICZ: Well, I mean, it's something that we have talked about quite a bit over the last year. And that is, we continue to see big losses in manufacturing and construction, but the losses are not as big.
For instance, manufacturing and construction, they lost about 60,000 jobs. Well, they averaged more than 100,000 at the beginning of the year. Retailers cut 10,000 jobs last month, compared to 44,000 a month earlier. So, again, improvement there.
What added jobs? Well, education and health care. Thank goodness for them.
A surprise here was that the government cut 18,000 jobs because the U.S. Post Office, it is raising the amount of money we have to pay for stamps and it is cutting jobs -- Tony.
HARRIS: Yes. Susan, appreciate it. We're going to talk more about this next hour with you. Thank you so much.
Let's take a look behind these numbers and dig a little bit deeper here.
I'm joined by Thomas Danny Boston, professor of economics at Georgia Tech. You have seen him on the program often.
I've got to tell you, Danny, first of all, jobless rate highest in 26 years. And the big number is 9.7 percent. Those are the two numbers that are going to dominate the discussion today, and not the news that Susan just shared with us -- 216,000 jobs lost in August and what that really represents as improvement.
What is your reaction to the August jobs report?
PROF. THOMAS BOSTON, GEORGIA TECH: Well, this is why economists always are accused of saying, well, on one hand, it's better, but on the other hand, it's worse. All right. Here's the reaction.
The really important number is that second number, the fact that it was expected that we would see a job loss of 233,000. Now, that's significant, but what happened was the job loss was only 216,000. So, that's better. So, that means that the economy is moving in the right direction.
Now, the unemployment figure is up, but that figure is going to be up, and it may even rise more, because unemployment, that rate is a lagging indicator. So, there's a lot of adjustment.
HARRIS: Again, please explain this, because we say it all the time. And I hope folks get it, but I don't think we can say it enough, because there are times when I get confused on it.
What do you mean when you say employment is a lagging indicator?
BOSTON: A lagging indicator. In other words, it takes a lot of things to begin to employee workers.
Right now, we have factories that have a lot of excess capacity; right? Big inventories. There are a number of workers -- there are about eight million workers who are employed part time. So, those workers will first get full-time employment, then we will find other workers who dropped out of the labor market coming into the labor market, and then we'll find factories beginning to increase production and reduce inventories. Then we will see the unemployment figures going down.
HARRIS: All right. So, again, you know, this is going to be the number right there on the screen. Jobless rate highest in 26 years. That's what a lot of folks are going to see, and they won't necessarily get the 216,000 jobs lost in August and that being an improvement on the situation.
You look at some of the recent polling that we have here at CNN, and folks are wondering, when do we get the uptick, the big uptick in job creation? All right? And they question and in some cases are outright skeptical of the president's economic policies.
Take a look at this.
President Obama's economic plan -- support, 52 percent. Oppose, 46 percent.
Effects of the president's policies on economic conditions. Take a look at this -- improved, 39 percent. Made worse, 34 percent. No effect, 27 percent.
People are still going to ask on this day, where are the jobs? What is the stimulus doing? Is it working? When will it work? When will I feel it in my own life?
BOSTON: And they have a right to, because, again, this is the second worst recession since the Great Depression. And so, there's still a great deal of misery around. But those numbers would probably be double -- in fact, there may be a recall on the president -- had there not been a stimulus package.
And so, it is true that the situation is not where we would like it. But it is much better than it would have been had there not been any intervention.
HARRIS: You're awesome. All right. Danny, appreciate it.
Dr. Boston is going to be back with us in just a couple of minutes.
And I want to tackle the growing perception in some quarters that even after the recession is officially declared over by all the data that really matters, many of the jobs that have been shed will never come back.
Let's take that on in just a couple of minutes. All right?
BOSTON: Very good.
HARRIS: We'll do it.
On the Afghan war front, the Pentagon planning to extend deployments for two units to give troops and placing them a year of home time before redeploying. Officials want to rotate the same troops in and out of the same areas so they can return to familiar surroundings.
Myanmar's detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be allowed to appeal her conviction. Her court date is in two weeks. Suu Kyi was given 18 more months of house arrest for violating terms of an earlier detention by allowing a U.S. man to stay at her home.
Surgical strike at a Jersey Apple store. Five bandits -- look at the video here -- smash the window and clean out much of the store in exactly 31 seconds. They got away with 23 MacBook Pros, 14 iPhones, and nine iPods.
Thousands of people are on organ donation waiting lists. Others with cold hard cash get surgery and some consequences.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE UNIT CORRESPONDENT: Basically, these two men were trafficking humans like used cars and using those cars, those people, for their spare parts.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly. And once the kidney was gone, so did the responsibility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: CNN investigates the black market of organ donations.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: Now to our "Hero of the Week."
It has been 10 years since the small Southeast Asian island of Timor erupted in a violent fight for independence. In the wake, more than a quarter of a million people were displaced, many of them children.
One commercial pilot was so moved by the disturbing images he saw right here on CNN, that he changed his entire life to help them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is "CNN Heroes."
BUDI SOEHARDI, CNN HERO: There was riots, buildings being burned. People just trying to save their lives.
The children were supposed to have proper upbringing, and what they were having there was far from being normal. This is devastating to me and my family. That's why we committed to go and to help.
My name is Budi Soehardi. I'm a pilot for Singapore Airlines. I founded an orphanage to help the children in West Timor.
When we started, we only had four children. And we found out that even more needed help badly. So, we decided to build our own orphanage building.
Right from the beginning, we give them vaccination, clothing, food. But we cannot give them anything more valuable than a proper education.
(singing): A, B, C, D, E, F, G...
CHILDREN (singing): A, B, C, D, E, F, G...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) when my parents died, I couldn't go to school. For me, Budi is an angel. And I'm now in medical school.
SOEHARDI: Very, very good, right?
We are able to provide and to teach them, just be who you are, help others, and do it from your heart.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: And to find out more about Budi's work and learn about the other 2009 heroes, just go to CNN.com/Heroes right now, and be sure to keep an eye out. In just a couple of weeks, we will be announcing the top 10 CNN Heroes of 2009.
President Obama's planned webcast next Tuesday to the nation's school kids has some parents concerned it will be politicized.
What do you think? Leave us a comment on our blog, CNN.com/Tony. We will share some of your comments on the air throughout the next hour and a half, right here in the CNN
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: You know what? We want to continue our discussion with Georgia Tech economics professor Thomas Danny Boston about the latest jobless figures.
Danny, here we go. The unemployment rate looks like it's going to hit 10 percent.
BOSTON: Getting close to it.
HARRIS: Do you believe it's going to happen?
BOSTON: I think it will get there.
HARRIS: Psychologically, what is the impact? Think about that, 10 percent or better unemployment for the country. What do you think is the psychological impact of that threshold?
BOSTON: That's a significant threshold and it's a significant impact if the whole picture is not taken into consideration. And it's a significant impact because there are economists who argue that 10 percent actually defines, if it lasts over a period of time, a depression.
Now, that's nowhere...
HARRIS: Are you in that camp?
BOSTON: No, absolutely not.
HARRIS: OK.
BOSTON: Absolutely not. And I think the majority of economists today would not argue that. But, it's a significant threshold. And it has potential to dampen consumer confidence, and if it damps consumer confidence, that means it slows down the economic expansion.
HARRIS: Yes. Yes.
Information here from the Labor Department. Let's put this graphic up on the screen.
Productivity, the amount of output per hour of work, rose at an annual rate of -- I can't even read my writing -- 6.8 percent in the April through June period, the largest advance since the summer of 2003.
All right. So, we are working harder.
BOSTON: Yes.
HARRIS: We are working harder, and the fact of the matter is, incomes aren't increasing. Personal incomes, correct?
BOSTON: Right. Correct.
HARRIS: So, here's the question. Even after this recession is declared officially over by all of the data that you bring us on a daily basis, it declares that it is over, the jobs picture is changing. The landscape is changing. And some of the jobs will not come back that have been shed by this recession. What do you believe?
BOSTON: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because many corporations as a strategy are cost cutting, and that's a permanent strategy. In other words, there won't be this rehiring of the large quanties of workers that have been shed. And so, that's one of the reasons why it's such a slow recovery, and it will be a slow recovery. And so, that's a -- you know, again, that's going to be sort of a permanent situation.
HARRIS: Let me cast it in slightly more dire terms. Employers are taking advantage, cutting deeper than necessary, delaying hiring of full-time workers, turning instead to part-time workers and contractors so that they can downsize their workforce, save more money and shed the benefits packages that go along with full-time employees.
BOSTON: Some of what is happening. Not all of what is happening.
(LAUGHTER)
HARRIS: OK.
BOSTON: You know, they're not all evil leaders.
HARRIS: Of course.
(LAUGHTER)
BOSTON: But that is some of what's happening. What is happening is that they're being driven to focus on the bottom line rather than the top line.
HARRIS: OK. BOSTON: They can't do that forever. But right now, to respond to shareholders and others in the corporate sector who have an interest in it, they're cutting costs and cutting costs. As a result, what productivity is is simply the amount of output per worker.
HARRIS: Yes, yes.
BOSTON: Workers are being driven harder.
HARRIS: Yes.
BOSTON: There's a smaller number of them. So, you get this high productivity figure.
HARRIS: What turns this whole story around? Is it corporations spending more, investing more? Is it consumers spending and driving demand? What turns this around, the jobs picture?
BOSTON: It has to be fundamentally driven by consumer confidence, because consumers account for over two-thirds of all spending in the economy under normal circumstances. And then businesses respond to consumers. And so, as consumer spending increases, business production and investment increases, and the whole cart gets driven forward.
HARRIS: So, it has to start with consumer spending.
BOSTON: Absolutely. And consumer spending...
HARRIS: And we're not in the mood.
BOSTON: Consumer spending starts with consumer confidence.
HARRIS: Whoa. Dan, appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
BOSTON: My pleasure.
HARRIS: Wow.
Ali Velshi -- our man is on the road with the CNN Express talking jobs and the economy. Ali held a town hall meeting with business school students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focusing on education and the jobs of the future.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ASH GUPTA, SENIOR: It seems to me like it's all going to be about innovation and -- especially in terms of entrepreneurship. We've got a lot more entrepreneurial talent here in the U.S. than we do anywhere else in the world. And so, because of that we're going to be moving towards a more innovation, more entrepreneurship-driven society. And that's really going to -- what's going to characterize the U.S.'s growth in the next 20, 30 years.
ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Other ideas? SAM ROCKWELL, SENIOR: I kind of see ourselves going back to the original way in which we were kind of founded on, going back to manufacturing. But I see the U.S. as being kind of an innovator in the face of the world. And as our products kind of become more mainstream and kind of world -- used worldwide, the manufacturing moves to other areas in the world.
And I think that we're going to kind of have a resurgence of manufacturing with the onset of green and all this wind turbine and new forms of energy, alternate clean forms of energy, new technology, hydrogen cars, maybe electric cars. We're going to see kind of coming back to the foundation of what we were built upon.
VELSHI: You know, we talked about high technology. Obviously, that requires education levels. That requires all sorts of people being educated. Do you think we do enough on that front? Are we going far enough on that front? Let's start with you, (INAUDIBLE).
CHYNNA HAAS, SENIOR: I would say absolutely not. I think our educational system in America that we don't fund higher education, we don't encourage it. I'm the first-generation college student. And for me, the amount of obstacles I've had to come over to, number one, get into a four-year institution like UW-Madison, and then number two, to actually stay here to make it to my senior year, we don't fund it.
Financial aid at our university alone, we have $20 million a year of unmet financial need. So, students graduate with that amount in debt versus that amount in grants. And so, I think that we always talk about people need to be more educated.
I'm from a working-class town, Beloit, Wisconsin, that has a 19 percent unemployment rate now. And what we're being told is you have to get educated so you can get better jobs. But they don't put the systems in place, though, so we can actually get educated and get those jobs. So, we just remain unemployed.
PATRICK MCEWEN, JUNIOR: I actually disagree a little bit. I think in some respects, we're almost too focused into the idea of education, that you need to get more and more in school, and it doesn't matter what your school's in. You need to focus on actual job skills.
There are a lot of students I think from my home town especially that were kind of encouraged to go to four-year schools and major in just whatever they thought was interesting. But they may have been better off at, you know, learning a trade or going to a two-year school and getting job skills that will help them actually find employment rather than just the idea of pure education just for the sake of education.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: That is good stuff. Ali's conversation is just getting started. The students tackle their own spending habits next in the NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: So, we want to take you back on the road now with Ali Velshi and the CNN Express. Ali continues his conversation with business students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This time, the topic is spending habits.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VELSHI: Let's hone in on if our behavior has to change, as people, as citizens, as consumers, who is responsible for that? Do we need to be teaching it more? Is it the media? Are there individuals?
PETE DIETRICH, MBA STUDENT: Sometimes it just comes down to mom and dad being responsible for their family and for teaching them what's right and what's wrong. And that includes also when you can't afford to go to the movie theater or buy the flat-screen TV, you shouldn't.
KELLY GAUTHIER, MBA STUDENT: Well, I think before we start talking about how we spend our money, we have to change -- we have to go through a bigger cultural value shift of our expectations. We have to spend more time talking about slow, steady sustainable growth. And that comes from an education, family perspective, cultural perspective.
I mean, some of the happiest people in the world are in Denmark because they have lower expectations of what their life is going to be. and it seems like in our lifetime, we've experienced one boom after another with a sudden bust, and so we have to start to realize that maybe what we expected, the McMansions and the SUVS and the 401(k)s, we have to live within our means and be more sustainable.
JULIAN MONCADA, JUNIOR: It's definitely a nice thing to think that we could live really nicely without buying new things or saving or not using a credit card. But I know at least me, in this crowd, and I'm not afraid to say it, I like it get things now. I like to spend money.
I know when I get a check, when I get a job, like, a career, and I get my first, like, advance check, it's not all going to go into my IRA. Like, I know I'm definitely going to spend money because that's -- the fact of the matter is, that is really ingrained into our culture.
NICHOLAS GRANT, MBA STUDENT: See, what I want to have happen is when someone makes a comment or decision to do that and consume for themselves, I want you to feel the consequences of that. I don't want to all of a sudden have to bail you out because I was responsible, I put my money in my bank account, yet you spent yours, so therefore the government's going to tax me and give my money to you.
Which effectively what's been happening. You know, someone could be unhealthy. Oh, well, don't worry, we'll get you health care. It's like, at some point, you know, rationality and moderate and -- being moderate is important. But at the same time, people need to feel consequences for their actions. If they don't, I mean, the best way to learn is from, you know, prior experience.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: OK. And we will be following Ali next week. Congress is heading back to Washington. The president is addressing a joint session of Congress. Ali's staying on the road to find out what you and the public want to see happening. We are riding along with Ali and the CNN Express all next week.
Let's get to our top stories now. A NATO spokeswoman tells CNN civilians were among the more than 90 people killed today in a NATO airstrike in Afghanistan. The strike was aimed at a pair of fuel tankers that had been hijacked by militants. NATO says it didn't know civilians were there collecting fuel.
Michael Jackson has finally been laid to rest. The pop singer's family and 200 of their closest friends gathered at a famous Hollywood cemetery for yesterday's final farewell. His three children placed a crown on his coffin before he was interred. Jackson died 10 weeks ago.
We should know who's attempting to influence it the president behind closed doors. The administration plans to change policy and reveal who visits the chief executive's mansion. The move comes after several lawsuits were filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
CNN senior White House correspondent Ed Henry is on CNN Radio. And Ed, good to talk to you, sir. Are we all connected?
ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: We are, Tony. How are you?
HARRIS: We are connected. I am terrific. Hey, I've got to -- I know you talked to Mr. Greer a short time ago.
HENRY: Yes.
HARRIS: And he is the head of the Republican Party in Florida, correct?
HENRY: That's right. And he's now saying -- he's been pretty tough on the president the last couple days. And he just told me here on CNN Radio that he actually is going to wait until Monday now and see what the White House posts on its Web site about the speech from the president.
And Jim Greer is now saying, look, if that is a noncontroversial speech, as the White House suggests, he's going to have his own children go to school in Florida on Tuesday and watch it, no questions asked. And Jim Greer is basically saying, now that the White House and the Education Department have sort of backed off the lesson plans that were going to go with this speech that seemed to suggest that they wanted to sort of rally support for the president's plans in some way, now that they've pulled back from that, maybe the temperature, maybe the volume's going to be turned down a little here. But I was just telling Jim Greer, I've got a third-grader and a kindergartener, and I can't indoctrinate them to stay at the dinner table because they want to go watch "SpongeBob SquarePants" in the middle of dinner. So, I'm not -- you know, if the president wants to try to indoctrinate them, good luck, Mr. President.
HARRIS: You know, that's so interesting because it began to feel as though -- the question I guess a lot of folks have been asking was, was this just a bad idea? Did Mr. Greer think it was just a bad idea in general for presidents to speak to students in this way? Or -- it was beginning to feel like, and because of the heat surrounding this, that it was a bad idea for this president to do this.
HENRY: I think it's been separated out now.
HARRIS: Good.
HENRY: And what we're seeing is that the lesson plan, which the White House itself has now said, look, it was inartfully worded to suggest help -- you know, students should find ways to help the president. But that the speech itself, if the White House posts it on its Web site Monday and gives people a tease for what students are going to see on Tuesday, and it really is just, hey, work hard, stay in school, that kind of thing.
I remember being here in Washington in 1991.
HARRIS: Yes.
HENRY: The first President Bush gave a very similar speech. And you can look it up. It was at Alice Deal Junior High School in the Tenleytown area of Washington. It sounds like pretty much the same thing President Obama wants to do.
But I think in this hypersensitive environment right now, sometimes these little things get sort of amped up real hard and real high. You know, maybe obviously, as I said, the lesson plan that the Education Department put out didn't help matters because maybe it suggested that something more nefarious was here at work. Nevertheless, I think the critics have also turned up the volume a little bit. Maybe now we can turn it back down, and people can actually talk about education reform, which is an important issue.
HARRIS: Wow. All right. "44 with Ed Henry." Ed, what's the phone number for (INAUDIBLE)?
HENRY: 1-877-266-4189. We've got a couple of callers right now waiting patiently to talk to Jim Greer, and we're going to him again on the other side of this.
HARRIS: Awesome, Ed. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
HENRY: Have a good weekend.
HARRIS: Thanks for your time.
HENRY: Appreciate it.
HARRIS: So, what do you think about this? Go to cnn.com/tony. Leave us a comment. Here's what a few of you are saying.
Steve says, "As a Republican and father of three, I am not in favor of the plan to speak with our children only because of the worksheets that are going to be handed out to the students. Take away the worksheets, and he has my blessings to motivate our children to stay in school and work hard."
To Ed's point just moments ago, MaryGene says, "I think it's ridiculous that people are saying President Obama is using this as a political ploy. My friends, that's the beauty of democracy. Even if you didn't vote for him, he is still your president and should be allowed to address school-aged Americans encouraging them to do well in school to succeed in this ever-changing world without being accused of ulterior motives."
And Lauren says, "As a student, I plan on not going to school that day because it's a load of bull that I have to sit and listen to the president try to rope me into his way of thinking. I'm glad that I don't have to write that assignment that was originally planned because I'd have to hand in a blank paper."
Wow. All right, cnn.com/tony.
Desperate to live. One person needs a kidney, another needs money. Both travel outside the country to make it happen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE UNIT CORRESPONDENT: Basically, these two men were trafficking humans like used cars and using those cars, those people, for their spare parts.
GILAD EHRLICH, ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Exactly. Ant once the kidney was gone, so did the responsibility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: CNN investigates the black market of organ donations.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: Israel is cracking down on kidney merchants. Two men went to prison for running a ring that targeted poor or mentally disabled Arabs. Here's part three of "Secret Harvest" from Drew Griffin and the special investigations unit.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE UNIT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was centered in northern Israel, where prosecutors allege a broker and a doctor treated the harvesting of kidneys like picking parts from used cars.
EHRLICH: The object was the kidney. In order to get the object, you needed the person, and you would traffic him in order to do that.
GRIFFIN: Gilad Ehrlich is one of the prosecutors who was able to shut down essentially a human trafficking ring, that sent both Israeli patients, all Jews, and their Israeli donors, all Arabs, to the Ukraine, where an Israeli doctor would perform the surgery. The broker is in prison. The doctor, in the Ukraine avoiding prosecution.
The allegation: that they preyed on illiterate, poor and desperate people for one purpose, to get their kidneys.
(on camera): Basically, these two men were trafficking humans like used cars and using those cars, those people, for their spare parts.
EHRLICH: Yes, exactly. And once the kidney was gone, so did the responsibility.
No medical care. No one took care of them. As I mentioned before, we had one victim that took out by himself his own stitches with a kitchen knife.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): The other prosecutor in this case, Bassam Kandaloff (ph), says the victims were lured in by newspaper ads like this one, published two years ago.
(on camera): The ads were placed in Arabic-speaking newspapers, targeting people like those who live in this very village in the north of Israel. Unemployment here is extremely high. The education level is low. The perfect place to find people desperate to sell just about anything, including their kidneys.
He's taking us to Kaffirmanda (ph). This is the village where a teenager was talked into -- duped, really -- into giving a kidney to somebody in the Ukraine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Most of the neighbors, they don't know.
GRIFFIN: They don't know yet what happened.
(voice-over): This is one of those victims. Kandaloff (ph) says he's embarrassed, still hurting. And once inside away from the neighbors, he showed us the awful reminder of what happened.
(on camera): And he still is tired, still is weak?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He feels like he's a -- to say these words, half person, half human being.
GRIFFIN: He's a half human being.
(voice-over): He was promised $7,000 for his kidney. He was given roughly half. Then the broker began deducting expenses, meals he was given and lodging. In the end, he sold his kidney, he says, for nearly nothing. Prosecutors say the ring preyed on people just like this man, illiterate, destitute, one victim a single divorced woman living in a Muslim culture.
EHRLICH: But when you're illiterate, and you have two kids, and you're divorced, and you're coming from a very, very poor family in a very, very poor village, in the end, you're the best prey.
GRIFFIN: Prosecutors won their convictions on evidence from just five cases. But they believe the ring has been going on perhaps for years. Its victims now too scared, too ashamed to admit they bear the scar of organ trafficking.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: Boy, that is nasty-looking. Special investigations correspondent Drew Griffin joining me once again. The young man that you featured in the piece there...
GRIFFIN: Right.
HARRIS: ... was he really duped? I mean, did he really not know what he was getting in to here?
GRIFFIN: According to the prosecutors, this guy was basically functionally illiterate. He was having emotional problems at the time when he answered the ad. He was having trouble with his parents. And he was literally talked into this, believing, number one, not only will you get paid, but there'd be some kind of a religious reward...
HARRIS: Yes.
GRIFFIN: ... involved with this. And that really, you don't need both your kidneys. You could actually live on a fifth of one kidney. They were really conned into this. And this, Tony, is the reason why so many people are against the sale, the illegal sale, of kidneys because you can prey on people.
HARRIS: Terrific reporting, drew, As always. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
And more on the black market organ trade tonight on "ANDERSON COOPER 360." Two medical doctors debate the pros and cons of what we just talked about here, a regulated commercial market for human organs in the United States.
That's at 10:00 tonight. Talk about a hot debate. Only on CNN.
And here is what we're working on for the next hour of CNN NEWSROOM.
Seniority used to be a valued commodity in the workforce, but economists say that is all changing. Aging baby boomers facing a job crisis at a time when many are looking to retire. We will take a closer look. Plus, stepping into a controversy over a planned address to the nation's schools. Ronald Reagan did it. So, too, the first President Bush. So, why is this nationwide presidential address raising such a fervor? A live report from the nation's capital, straight ahead in the next hour of CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: Hey, one of the reigning superstars in this country right now, there she is, Beyonce, star of the red carpet, star of movies, music superstar. Of course, no other reason to play this video and play this song other than the fact that Beyonce is celebrating a birthday today. She's 28. And it's Beyonce! We're back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: So, let's say you want to give some money to a relative. What is your tax obligation, your tax bite, if any? CNN's personal finance editor Gerri Willis answers that and other viewer questions in today's "Top Tips."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GERRI WILLIS, CNN PERSONAL FINANCE EDITOR: Hi. Let's just jump right into that first e-mail. This one comes from John. He writes, "How much money can be given from one family member to another without having to report it to the IRS?"
Well, John, that's a great question. You can give $13,000 to an individual every year without having to file it on your taxes. If you give more than that amount, you'll have to tell Uncle Sam. Now, you don't have to pay taxes on that money, but that amount will count against how much you can leave your heirs tax-free after you die.
Our next question comes from Judy. She writes, "You said never give your Social Security number to people you don't know. What about the doctor's office, that's always asking for your Social Security number. Is there any way to get around not giving it to them?"
Well, the bottom line here is that you don't have to give out your Social Security number. Just leave that part blank. Think about it -- your doctor already has your insurance information, your name, your address and even your credit card info, if you pay your bill by credit card, so there's really no reason to give them their Social Security number.
And finally, our last question comes from Donna. She asks, "I'm buying a mobile home as a rent to own. I put 5 percent of the purchase price down, and they take a portion of the remaining 5 percent and put it into escrow. Does this qualify me for the first- time home buyer tax credit?"
Well, Donna, it unfortunately doesn't sound like you qualify. You have to own the home outright before December 1st of this year. A rent-to-own agreement isn't the same as owning something now. In a rent-to-own agreement, you generally have the right to purchase the home at some future date. Your name has to be on the title in order to get the first-time homebuyer tax credit. For more information, go to federalhousingtaxcredit.com.
And of course, if you have questions, send them to me at gerri@CNN.com. We answer those questions right here every Friday. Back to you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: All right, Gerri, appreciate it. Thank you.
