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Info Emerging on Pentagon Shooter; Another 36,000 Jobs Lost, Some Gained; Hospitals Charging Outrageous Prices
Aired March 05, 2010 - 13:00 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 go time for Friday. CNN NEWSROOM continues right now with the man, Ali Velshi!
ALI VELSHI, HOST: Get those phones ringing off the hook on the T. Harris hotline.
You have yourself a fantastic weekend, Tony.
As Tony said, I'm Ali Velshi. I'm here with you for the next two hours today and for these hours every weekday. I'm going to take every important topic that we cover and try to break it down for you. I'm going to try to give you a level of detail that's going to help you make important decisions about your voting, your spending, your safety and security. Safety and security top the list today.
Here's what I've got on the rundown. It may be the most fortified building on earth, but a gunman with a beef against the government got way too close. A shoot-out at the Pentagon. We're digging deeper into the shooter's background. Who was he? Why was he so angry? And is he part of a disturbing new trend?
Also on the rundown now, President Obama wants struggling school districts to take drastic step -- steps. One school district did. Central Falls in Rhode Island fired all the teachers at one high school, all of them. Is this problem solving or scapegoating?
Plus, it's the single most important thing that drives the economy: jobs. I'm breaking down the latest government report. We are still losing jobs. Even Spider-Man has lost his job. Christine Romans and Suze Orman and some very smart people join me for the topic that is most important to your financial wellbeing this hour.
First, who was this guy? Investigators are looking into the history of John Patrick Bedell, identified as the gunman who wounded two police officers at the Pentagon yesterday.
Here's a closer look at what happened. Thursday evening Bedell left the Pentagon Metro subway station and walked about 59 feet toward the Pentagon when he was approached by officers. Authorities say he pulled a gun out of his pocket and he opened fire when asked for identification. He was reaching into his pocket. They thought it was for identification. It was a gun.
Officer Jeffrey Amos and Marvin Carraway shot back with semiautomatic weapons. Lots of bullets were fired. The Pentagon officials say it took less than a minute to subdue Bedell, who was about 50 feet from the entrance to the Pentagon.
Pentagon police say surveillance video shows Bedell seemed emotionless throughout the entire ordeal.
Bedell died earlier today from gunshot wounds, while the officers Bedell shot suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
Let's bring in our homeland security correspondent, Jeanne Meserve.
Jeanne, what do federal investigators know about John Bedell?
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ali, they have just released a photograph of John Patrick Bedell here. Let's take a look at him.
We don't know exactly when this photograph was taken, but we do learn from the FBI that this is not what he looked like last night when the shooting took place. They are telling us at that time he had a full beard. They described him as being dressed in slacks, a white- colored shirt and a blazer.
Additionally, they're telling us that he was shot in the head and also in the left triceps during that exchange of gunfire.
Right now his car is being searched by law enforcement, looking for clues, looking for information. We're told it was a 1998 green Toyota Avalon. They found it parked in a parking lot at the Pentagon City Mall, which is very near to where the shooting took place.
Let us show you this -- this animation we've created to give you a better sense of exactly where this happened. You can see here the Pentagon, the Metro station, that's where the shooting took place. You can see just how close this was to the Pentagon.
The big question, of course, is why this man did it. They are still very much in the middle of that investigation, looking at cell- phone records, but also at Internet postings that may have put up by him for a clue as to why he did this.
We have found a lot of things on the Internet, posted by someone called J. Patrick Bedell, which appears to be the same individual. A lot of them are anti-government diatribes. Let's take a listen to one piece of -- of audio that we found on the Internet.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN PATRICK BEDELL, SUSPECTED PENTAGON SHOOTER: To prevent themselves from being enslaved, the powerful masters of our existing governments use every means at their disposal, including bribery, theft, and murder, to control those governments, which are, in imperfect institutions, operated by imperfect individuals.
In order to properly address these very serious matters, it is necessary to recognize the importance of enduring principles for setting a positive direction that we can pursue, mindful of the real threats of that we must overcome.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MESERVE: In one of this postings, this J. Patrick Bedell refers to being arrested for marijuana and, indeed, court records from California that show that someone by the name of John Patrick Bedell was arrested in June of 2006 for cultivating marijuana and for resisting -- excuse me, resisting arrest.
All of this, of course, part of the investigation into who this individual was, and what in the world motivated him to do this.
Tony [SIC], back to you.
VELSHI: All right. It does make people think back to a few weeks ago, the -- the pilot that we had, flying his plane into an IRS building. Also leaving behind information about a -- sort of his anger with government. It's very -- it's sort of worrisome when you start to see these things.
Have your contacts expressed any concerns about -- are people, is this a trend? Are people mad at government and doing things that -- that hurt other people?
MESERVE: Well, nobody likes to see these things happen...
VELSHI: Yes.
MESERVE: ... whether in clusters or not. There does seem to be a cluster right now.
VELSHI: Right.
MESERVE: But nobody is trying to explain it at this point in time. And we've seen this in the past, too. Whether it's copycatting or just coincidence...
VELSHI: Right.
MESERVE: ... it's just too early to know, Ali.
VELSHI: Very good. And you'll be on it with your sources. Thanks very much. Jeanne Meserve at our security desk in Washington.
We have heard that John Patrick Bedell lived with his parents in Hollister, California. Next hour we'll take you live to his hometown for more on who he is and his home life.
All right. The other big story we've got today is jobs. We are breaking down the job report for February with Christine Romans, Diane Swonk and Peter Murray Seed (ph) when we come back. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: If you couldn't care less about business and the economy, and I know there are some of you out there who couldn't, it's kind of my job to look after these things. Here's one story that does deserve your full attention: jobs.
Everything depends on having a job. And today we learned that 36,000 of them were lost in the month of February. Put it another way, 36,000 more people lost their jobs on balance. That brings to 8.4 million the number of jobs lost since the recession began.
The unemployment rate for February -- we always have these -- it's always the previous month -- is 9.7 percent. It was unchanged from January, but as I said, 36,000 jobs were lost, and since the beginning of the recession, we have lost 8.4 million.
Let's just break down where some of these losses were. In the construction industry, 64,000 jobs were lost. That's because we're not building.
Let's go back for a second if we can. Sixty-four-thousand jobs were lost because we're not -- we're not building any more houses. In the information business, jobs were lost, 18,000 of them. And in government, jobs were lost. But keep in mind, for the last couple of years we've been gaining a lot of jobs in government. It's been one of the only growth areas.
Let's take a look at where we've seen jobs actually grow. And those were in -- let's bring those forward for a second -- temporary help. This is an interesting one. This is a sign that things might be getting better, even though we don't like temporary jobs as a rule, this might be a good sign.
In health care, we've seen health care gaining jobs for about two years now. This is one of the strongest areas in the economy.
Here is something very interesting. Manufacturing. Manufacturing industry has been losing jobs in America for years, long before this recession came in. A thousand jobs is not a big gain, but the bottom line is, it's not a loss.
All right, the temporary job trend is significant. I want to dig into that and some other things with my co-host from "YOUR $$$$$," Christine Romans. She joins me now from New York.
Christine, you and I have been digging on this report all morning. What do you find interesting?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the temporary jobs, let me talk about that for a second, because those have been gaining since pretty much September, Ali. About 250,000 temporary jobs added since September. What that's showing is that companies are seeing maybe their orders stabilizing, and they're trying to hire some people, but they're not really committing to full-time workers.
A lot of economists concerned those jobs are not turning into full-time jobs. And they're concerned about the new kind of American work force, the perm-a-lancer, where you come in as a contractor, a temporary worker, but it doesn't necessarily ever translate into permanent jobs. Those manufacturing jobs, also interesting, Ali. I was talking with Bill Rogers from Rutgers about this. He's actually concerned that we don't read too much into that 1,000 gain in manufacturing jobs. We have lost so many, there aren't very many jobs left to keep cutting in manufacturing, quite frankly. He's worried those jobs are simply not going to come back, so he's not looking at this as necessarily a net positive for this report.
VELSHI: You and I have been going back and forth on this all morning with our colleagues about whether this is a half-full or a half-empty jobs report. And I guess there are arguments on both sides.
There's one view you can take that says there are enough rays of hope in this jobs report to, you know, think positively about it. Fewer jobs lost than were expected. A drop in the long term, the number of people who are long-term jobless, and this rise, as you said, in temporary hires. But there's the flip side of that that's not so positive.
ROMANS: And the flip side is, you know, 40 percent of the people who are unemployed are long-term unemployed. They've been unemployed for six months of longer.
This is a really dangerous situation when such a huge number of people have been out of work for so long. It makes it very hard to find your place again in the labor market. And so this is something that we're really dealing with that's got political and economic and social and family...
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: Family ramifications. So, this is something people are really concerned with.
One thing in here, Ali, you know, we've been saying -- how many times have I said -- 30.2 weeks is the average length of unemployment.
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: That shortened a little bit by about four days. You can expect to be unemployed now about 208 days. That's a long time.
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: But it's a little shorter than it was in January.
VELSHI: Let's bring in Peter Moricci. He's a professor at the University of Maryland, and Diane Swonk, the chief economist at Mesirow Financial. She's in Chicago. The two of them are joining us in this conversation.
Peter, I want to start with you. I was reading your stuff this week where you said, if there is a big spike in unemployment, it means we have to worry about a double-dip recession. Second -- second leg down. And if there's a big drop in unemployment made you'd be prepared to say this was coming to an end. We kind of got neither.
PETER MORICCI, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: Absolutely, we got neither. We saw some rays of hope in this.
You know, in that manufacturing number, although we only gained 1,000 jobs, that was with the Toyota layoffs and those kind of issues there. We got some positive news in some other sectors, as well.
But overall, we should be expecting the job losses to end at this point in the recovery, eight months in. But in addition to these numbers, we continue to get very high new unemployment claims. Up over 450,000 a month, when below 350,000 is considered healthy. We are not out of the woods. We're walking along the precipice of a double-dip recession.
VELSHI: All right. I might even think that Susan -- that Diane is going to agree with you.
Diane, we are definitely on the edge of something. Are you looking at this glass half empty or glass half full?
DIANE SWONK, CHIEF ECONOMIST, MESIROW FINANCIAL: Well, I guess, you know, less bad is good news now, which is kind of where we're at. It's instead of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence, we're -- it's just a little less yellow.
At this stage of the game, I think a risk of a double dip is somewhere around 10 to 20 percent, which is way too high. We're seeing a very sub-par recovery. And even if you strip out some of the winter effects, although the DLS, the Labor Department, kind of punted on that, some more hardcore crunching by macroeconomic advisors, who are about the best out there, suggest that the actual number was positive in the month of February absent snowstorms.
But when you're walking on such thin ice that a snowstorm can push you over the edge...
VELSHI: Yes.
SWONK: ... and cause people to increase the number of unemployment insurance claims, clearly, it underscores the fragility of the recovery, and the fact that we should be seeing -- even if we get up to 200,000. 300,000 jobs a month, it's still a small fraction of what we should be seeing, given the depth of the losses we've all endured.
VELSHI: Peter, what's your predication as to when -- I mean, this is the question people ask me who don't study economics all the time. When does this start to feel like it felt before the recession? In other words, when do we get back to a place where most people are employed and that they're earning money and wages are going up and the economy feels good to people?
MORICCI: If we're talking about 6 percent unemployment of something -- instead of something close to 10, I think we're three or four years away. If we are lucky enough not to have a double dip, then the economy's only going to grow at 3 or 4 percent a year. At 4 percent a year, we will add maybe 1.5 to 2 million jobs a year.
Over 3 or 4 years we need to add ten-plus million jobs to get back to where we were before. We have to recoup what we've lost and accommodate more than a million new labor force entrants each year as folks become 18. So, we're three or four years away from feeling good, unless we do something fundamental to fire up growth, which this administration hasn't seemed to find the key to do.
VELSHI: Christine, this is the question you and I got asked an hour ago when we were talking to Tony Harris. What's that thing going to be? We know we've lost -- most of our jobs have been lost in manufacturing. We generally know most of those jobs are not coming back. So what do we do? What deals with the bulk of the people who have been unemployed in this country?
ROMANS: I mean, in the near term, I mean, the way the policy makers are trying to deal with it is trying to deal with the safety net of all those people who have been put out of work.
But I mean, Peter Moricci had some very, very strong opinions about green jobs, and how that -- green jobs are not the answer to all of our problems. They are a very small sliver.
MORICCI: No, they are not.
ROMANS: And Peter, you can go on about this more. But you keep hearing about how green technology, this it going to be the new Internet. This is going to be the new thing that's going to drive us forward, but that's not a sure bet either. I mean, 10 million jobs is a lot of jobs. And I don't think anybody really knows exactly what is the thing that's going to create those jobs if they can be created in the near term.
VELSHI: Diane, do you have any idea what that could be?
SWONK: Well, you know, I just want to add to the -- unfortunately, the -- we never know...
VELSHI: Yes.
SWONK: ... what is going to be the new thing. And the reality is we always get surprised, and that's the good news.
The bad news is the number of people who have been unemployed for so long, this is really upping the ante to your earlier story, about, you know, how many people are angry with the government. I grew up in Michigan with 25 percent unemployment rate. And we gave birth to the Michigan militia, which trained Timothy McVeigh, our own homegrown terrorist.
We now have a high on militias and militias throughout the country. And this is something that does accompany structurally high unemployment. VELSHI: Yes.
SWONK: And this is what we're really worried about, is the number of people. We've got over a million people...
VELSHI: Right.
SWONK: ... that are discouraged workers who have just given up. And many people are employed today, and that unemployment rate is not higher because they've accepted part-time instead of full-time work.
VELSHI: Right.
SWONK: That went up in the month of February, as well. So those issues, I think, are something that are going to really be a constant worry. And I agree that we aren't going to see anything near what anyone would consider normal until about 2013, early 2014.
VELSHI: Yes. Wow.
SWONK: That's no easy...
VELSHI: That is -- that is strong medicine. Diane, thanks very much.
Diane Swonk is the chief economist of Mesirow Financial, joining us from Chicago. Peter Moricci, professor at the University of Maryland. Christine Romans, my colleague on "YOUR $$$$$." She's the co-host of the show. And you can watch it every Saturday at 1 p.m. or Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern.
Christine will be back. You'll see her in just a minute again, because we've got Suze Orman with us to tell us about how unemployment is affecting more people than you'd actually think it is.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: You know, the reason we've been talking about jobs it's the first Friday of the month, and that's when we get the unemployment report.
It seems these days no one is immune to losing a job, not even Spider-Man, yes, Spider-Man. In the latest Marvel comics, Spider- Man's alter ego, Peter Parker, gets fired. He loses his job as a photographer. Now, I guess his Spidey sense didn't see that coming.
What kind of message does that send when a superhero loses his job? Well, your host -- "YOUR $$$$$" co-host, Christine Romans, and I had a chance to ask personal finance expert Suze Orman, who says it's the right message.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SUZE ORMAN, PERSONAL FINANCE EXPERT: Let me tell you why I think it's great, especially for the young-ins out there that are reading the comic books and that are idolizing these superheroes, thinking nothing could happen.
A lot of these kids, if you talk to them, go, "I want to be a superhero." Well, you be a superhero in life when you can deal with all kinds of devastation, and it is a reality that you may just lose your jobs.
So what has he done to prepare for losing his job? He might be able to claw -- you know, crawl all over those buildings and put on that little, you know, suit that he does.
But the truth of the matter is, this is a web that every one of us needs to learn how to deal with, and I think if children can see that this is a reality and, what is Peter going to do? I think it can teach them to actually be responsible with money. I say do it any way you can.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: She's got a lot of other things that she told Christine and me. You can watch it on "YOUR $$$$$" this Saturday at 1 p.m. or Sunday at 3 p.m. Eastern. Suze is celebrating eight years as the anchor of her show on CNBC with an anniversary special this Saturday night.
Let's get a check of the top stories now.
In Arizona, six people were thrown from a bus and killed this morning. At least 15 others are injured after the bus hit a pickup truck and rolled over just south of Phoenix. The roof of the bus was crushed. Rescuers had to break through windows to get to the victims.
In Arlington, Virginia, the gunman in a Pentagon shootout acted alone according to police. He shot and wounded two officers last night before they shot him. He later died. Internet postings from John Patrick Bedell suggest a growing distrust in the federal government.
Plus the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks could face trial in a military court instead of a civilian one. A senior White House official says advisors are thinking about pushing for a tribunal. That's at odds with a suggestion from Attorney General Eric Holder. He wanted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and some alleged accomplices tried in civilian court in New York City.
All right. Coming up, Elizabeth Cohen, our senior medical correspondent, joins me, following up on her medical waste series that you've reacted to so well this week. You've been sharing your personal stories with us, and Elizabeth is going to give you some answers. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Fifty cents of every dollar we spend on health care is wasted. We've been reporting on this all week, and you are weighing in on it. So many of you have faced this firsthand that you've been flooding us with your personal stories. So senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here. She's following up on her series, "Health Care: Prescription for Waste."
Elizabeth, what have you got? We wanted to follow-up on a -- can I ask you about an e-mail that we got?
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Actually, we'll do that after.
VELSHI: OK, right.
COHEN: First, I want to show you some incredible things.
VELSHI: All right.
COHEN: Because Ali, because everybody has a story. I didn't realize this until I did this series. Everyone has a story about some crazy hospital costs. We got hundreds of comments on our newsroom blog about this. So let's just get to it.
We received a comment on our blog about a man whose child was in the hospital, and they received two CCs of Tylenol. That's what's right here. That's two CCs of Tylenol. The cost is $128.
VELSHI: Wow.
COHEN: That's how much the hospital charged for two CCs of children's Tylenol.
VELSHI: What is the whole bottle at a drugstore, five, six bucks, something like that?
COHEN: If that. Right, if that. Isn't that crazy?
VELSHI: Wow.
COHEN: Here's another one. The babies, apparently, this happens a lot.
VELSHI: Yes.
COHEN: You know, babies use pacifiers and some so -- and some parents would say they're worth their weight in gold.
VELSHI: Right.
COHEN: Apparently, at hospitals they're worth $121. A man wrote in to tell us about his experience where they charged $121.
Now, at a hospital, if the baby spits out the paci (ph) and it lands on the floor, they don't wash it off. They break out a new one.
VELSHI: Right.
COHEN: Which is, you know, a good thing. So this little girl used up 11 pacifiers. Right here, we've assembled 11 pacifiers. So put that all together, if you do the math -- I can tell, Ali, you're doing the math in your head -- $1,331 in charges for pacifiers.
VELSHI: Can't you -- can you buy a dozen of those in a bag at Costco or something? That is incredible.
COHEN: Absolutely. Absolutely. And hospitals say, "Well, it's not like Costco."
VELSHI: Right.
COHEN: "You know, we have to pay for our electricity and the staff."
VELSHI: Sure. And we have people down (UNINTELLIGIBLE). No, I understand that.
COHEN: Exactly.
VELSHI: It's just that some of the examples you showed us seem so egregious.
COHEN: Right.
VELSHI: Let me ask you about this e-mail we got from a CNN.com user who shared this: "All I can say is we need to standardize costs across the board that no one can set prices that are as outrageous as these."
You know, that's the sort of a comment that can apply to so many things we report on here. Why don't we just standardize those prices so they can't gouge us?
COHEN: Right. For example, some fancy restaurants will charge $25 for a hamburger.
VELSHI: Right.
COHEN: But you don't tell the restaurant they can't do that. If someone's willing to pay it...
VELSHI: You don't -- you don't eat that hamburger. Yes.
COHEN: Right. If someone is willing to pay 25 bucks for a hamburger, the hospital can charge it.
It's kind of similar with hospitals. If someone, meaning the insurance company, will pay $121 for a pacifier -- and sometimes they won't -- but if they will, that's what they're going to charge. It's a free-market economy.
VELSHI: Yes.
COHEN: And it's interesting. People have suggested the government step in and regulate that, but I'll tell you, when Americans start hearing about government regulation...
VELSHI: Right. COHEN: ... of health care in any way, shape, or form, they go berserk.
VELSHI: Right, right. And the other thing about the hamburger is you see it on the menu, and you...
COHEN: Yes.
VELSHI: ... you can make that choice not to see it. I don't think most people don't expect, if they go in for some sort of surgery, we don't get to negotiate: you can use fewer bandages or I'll bring my own Tylenol.
COHEN: Right.
VELSHI: You just think that that's part of the treatment.
COHEN: Right. Exactly. You don't ask when they're sewing you up, "Could you use the less expensive sutures?"
But I'd love to hear other stories like this.
VELSHI: Yes.
COHEN: Because I know they're out there.
VELSHI: We've had a lot of response to this.
COHEN: LizCohenCNN. That's my Twitter address: LizCohenCNN.
VELSHI: All right. Let's do that. Let's keep on following up on this, because we've had a lot of people who are very surprised. But the one thing I take away from hearing you all week is really work hard in this environment to be a better consumer of health care.
COHEN: Right.
VELSHI: Really study. You -- you were able to find out from different hospitals what different procedures cost. It's not impossible. People should really try and do it.
COHEN: And it matters. Because when you have that 20 percent co-pay, as so many of us do...
VELSHI: Yes, right.
COHEN: ... it matters how much that surgery costs.
VELSHI: Right. The difference between a $5,000 and a $10,000 surgery is different.
COHEN: Huge. Right.
VELSHI: So thank you for that. Great, great stuff. Elizabeth Cohen, our senior medical correspondent.
All right. Let's go to Chad. Chad Myers.
You know -- you know I'm getting on a flight tonight. I'm going to Florida. It's supposed to be warm in Florida in winter.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: You know, my comment when I called you yesterday...
VELSHI: Pigpen. You said I'm like Pigpen. I walk around with my own weather system.
MYERS: I was tweeting all over -- all over the globe yesterday, because I think of myself as that same person, but I just make a mess with dirt.
VELSHI: Right.
(WEATHER REPORT)
VELSHI: We'll take that.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You'll take that?
VELSHI: I'll take that.
MYERS: All right. No rain to wash away your --
VELSHI: I'll definitely take things that have a four in front of them, definitely a five in front of them, just trying to get out of the threes.
MYERS: Isn't it amazing how much we've lowered our standards?
VELSHI: Exactly right. Wow. Good to see you, my friend, we'll see you again in the show. Chad Myers giving your weekend weather coming up.
All right, Twitter has had ten billionth tweet. Who cares? Sanchez cares, but other than that, why does it matter? We're gonna tell you about it when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Ten billion tweets. That's how many tweets are going out right now -- that's how many have gone out. Send a couple my way, by the way. My address is @AliVelshi. You can tell us what you think of the show, idea, critiques, whatever you like.
But the bottom line is, what does this mean? Why do I care that there have been 10 billion tweets out there? What does it mean to me? Errol Barnett is joining us now. He's with CNN, he follows all of this stuff.
Errol, why? What does it mean?
ERROL BARNETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a massive amount of information for sure. But let's not forget this a company that started just four years ago. Still under 140 characters, they have 140 employees. So, it's a small, kind of chugging away little train. What is significant, a few months ago, the end of 2008, they crossed 5 billion tweets.
VELSHI: Wow.
BARNETT: Twitter says they get 50 million of those little tiny messages each and every day.
VELSHI: 140 characters.
BARNETT: Small little things, you know. You and I use them to talk about links and what's coming up. Many people are talking about what they are doing. But they, at this rate, Ali, they'll hit this 20 billion before the year is out.
So, Twitter has proved its worth. Let's not forget last year the U.S. government asked Twitter to delay maintenance so the people in Iran could continue to use the site to upload videos. It's really --
VELSHI: I was going to say, what's the reason it has become big? Is it news events, celebrity stuff? What's driven this?
BARNETT: Mass news events, celebrities using the sight to allow people to kind of get insight into their personal lives as well. But it's these kind of upstarts in out of Silicon Valley that make their use first and then allow people to catch on --
VELSHI: One thing that's important about Twitter it's not a fancy site in and of itself.
BARNETT: Simple! Clean.
VELSHI: But other applications come in and allow you to use it, so it's become something that lots of people have found a way to use it. People use it commercially and otherwise. Give me a sense of this versus other landmarks. Because every time we talk, we're talking about some landmark number of people using things.
BARNETT: You have to be a big-time Web site to be a member of the billionaire club, it was just last week when Apple crossed its own 10 billionth - 10 billionth download of the song that was Johnny Cash's --
VELSHI: Johnny Cash.
BARNETT: "Things Go That Way?" Remember that song? Perhaps?
VELSHI: Why do you? You're too young for that.
BARNETT: Well, that's why I said perhaps. That why - I really don't. But they, of course, make money.
VELSHI: It's an old joke.
BARNETT: But they, of course, make money from each and every download.
VELSHI: Right. That's obvious.
BARNETT: Let's look at YouTube. They get now a billion views of all the fancy videos each and every day. In fact, a Google executive -- or Google owns YouTube, a Google executive said they expect to make money by the end of this year, which is huge, as well.
Facebook, we can't leave out. Three billion photos shared each and every month.
VELSHI: The biggest photo hosting site on earth now.
BARNETT: More people using Facebook than the entire American population. And Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO --
VELSHI: And he was never in it for the money when he started. It was a lot like when you and I talked about Chat Roulette, it was some guy who just sort of wanted to achieve something and it became huge.
BARNETT: Exactly. There's actually a term that all the companies in Silicon Valleys use, it's called the URL strategy.
VELSHI: So, you might think URL strategy the means the URL -
BARNETT: Uniform Resource Locator.
VELSHI: The Web site.
BARNETT: It means ubiquity first, revenue later. That breaks down to, look, we have something new, something interesting. Hopefully we can get deep-pocketed investors, venture capitalists to give us cash. Let's show our worth and then let's worry about the money. Twitter's a private company. Facebook is not public yet, and they are continuing to prove their worth.
VELSHI: As you've shown, you don't need a whole lot of investment to make things like this work. So, they are ubiquitous with what many people would say is a lousy Web site. It doesn't really have any bells and whistles to it. But they've become ubiquitous.
BARNETT: But they have proved their use and utility. And we talk to viewers about this all the time. And you can connect with me, ErrolCNN on Twitter and on Facebook to hear what viewers think, because it's changing the game. It's changing the game. It's changing the dynamics.
VELSHI: Good to have you, my friend. Have a good weekend.
BARNETT: Good seeing you, Velshi!
VELSHI: Errol Barnett, we'll be doing this very regularly with him because he's our tech guy. All right. We've been talking a lot about education on this show. The president said schools, boards and districts have to take drastic action. Well, that's what they did in Rhode Island. One school district fired all the teachers at one school. We'll tell you what's going on with that story when we come back.
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VELSHI: You're fired, we're not going to take it anymore. That's what the school board said to the teachers. And by the way, the teachers said back to the school board, we're not going to take it anymore. We're not working for the money you pay us. We're not doing extra work for the money you pay us.
Imagine all the teachers, administration and support staff fired from your child's school? That's a reality in one Rhode Island school district. The Superintendent of Central Falls School District fired everyone at the high school effective the end of the school year. We're talking 93 people, the principal, assistant principal, 77 teachers and the support staff.
In a proposal based on federal guidelines, superintendent Frances Gallo asked teachers to work a longer school day of seven hours, and tutor students weekly for one hour outside school time. She proposed teachers have lunch with students, meet for 90 minutes every week to discuss education, and set aside two weeks during summer break for paid professional development.
The union said the teachers had accepted most of the changes, but wanted to work out compensation for the extra hours of work. The superintendent said the two sides could not agree on a pay rate, so now the teachers who have been fired are fighting back. More than 100 teachers protested the decision last night. Superintendent Gallo said she's willing to negotiate after the union promised to support reforms, but she's not sure why the union went ahead with last night's rally.
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FRANCES GALLO, CENTRAL FALLS SUPERINTENDENT: I just think this is -- continues to be a sad situation. We talk about collaboration, but then we hold a rally like this, in front of the board of regents. I don't know what they -- what anyone really wants to gain at this point in time.
JANE SESSUMS, PRESIDENT, CENTRAL FALLS TEACHERS UNION: This is about supporting teachers and students, and, I mean, whenever teachers can get together to support each other and support the students, I don't think that should interfere with anything.
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VELSHI: That second sound bite was with a representative from the Central Falls Teachers Union. The union position is the current system was working fine, citing student scores that have gone up for the last two years.
All right, let's talk about the bigger issue. Students performance at this school. This will be interesting to you. The median family income, the median family income, which means half of the family incomes are higher than this, half are lower. It's not a average. The median is $22,000, that is for a family. Fifty percent of the students in that school are failing every single subject. And only seven percent of the students are proficient in math. Ninety- three percent are not.
Now, you can use this as an argument for either side. You could be the teachers saying, we're up against something very difficult here. How are these children getting support at home? Are they eating enough? Do they come to school with the right skill set, and then you're blaming us that they're not doing well?
Or you can take it from the superintendent's perspective and say, guys, 50 percent of the students are failing every subject, and only seven percent proficient in math, and you want extra money to do a little extra work with these students? This is the problem in the school district. We'll be continuing to have this conversation about how you fix the public school system in this country.
All right. Checking up on some Top Stories now.
The new jobs report is out. It show also the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent last month. The economy lost 36,000 jobs. That's actually fewer than economists were expecting. There's an encouraging sign that employers are tentatively looking to hire again. More than 47,000 temporary workers were added to the payrolls last month.
In Washington, a possible reversal on how to try five September 11 suspects including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. White House advisors may recommend military tribunals rather than trying them in New York City in civilian court like attorney general Eric Holder initally wanted to. Holder's plan has drawn a lot of fire from city officials and others.
And technofiles, mark these two dates on your calendars. March 12th, Apple's online store will start taking orders for the new iPad. And April 3rd, that's when the first iPad will be available in the United States.
And in Detroit, hundreds of General Motors' dealerships will stay open after all. The company will announce that it is keeping about a quarter of the dealerships that it was targeting for elimination across the country. That translates to about 600 stores.
Let's go to Capitol Hill, where it seems a whole lot of nothing is getting done. Lawmakers, as you know, can't seem to pass much these days, and nothing exemplifies it more than health care. Here's Dana Bash.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): How hard will it be to get health care through the House and onto the president's desk? Just ask the speaker.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: Every legislative vote is a heavy lift around here. You assume nothing.
BASH: Privately Democratic sources suggest heavy lift is an understatement. To explain why, let's go back to November when the House approved its version of health care. The vote was 220-215. Already a slim margin. And since then, Democrats have lost four votes, three vacancies and one Republican publicly bolting.
That leaves just 216. One vote short of 217. The minimum number currently need for House victory.
(on camera): And now the outcome is even more uncertain. That's because to get around Republican opposition, the president asked House Democrats to just send him the Senate's bill with a package of changes.
REP. DAN MAFFEI (D), NEW YORK: Yes, this is a tough one.
BASH (voice-over): Dan () is a Democrat in a Republican-leaning district. One of many Democrats who voted yes to the House bill but may vote no now because of a tax that he says hits middle class Americans.
(on camera): Have you decided yet how you will vote in the coming process?
MAFFEI: Well, I have to say I was very disappointed with the Senate bill mainly because it taxed health care benefits. As much as I want to do health care reform, I don't think you can rob Peter to pay Paul.
BASH: Then there's a group of a dozen anti-abortion Democrats insisting on tougher abortion restrictions and threatening to switch yes votes to no.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will not compromise that principle or belief.
BASH: But there are some Democrats in the no column who could be persuaded.
REP. JASON ALTMIRE (D), PENNSYLVANIA: I'm open. I want to bring down the cost of health care.
BASH: Congressman Jason Altmire says the House bill didn't go far enough in doing that but --
ALTMIRE: We have work to do. But the Senate bill is a better starting point than the House bill.
BASH (on camera): Congressman Altmire is being lobbied heavily. He was invited to the White House twice within 24 hours, but in talking to him and other several other undecided Democratic lawmakers, it is far from certain whether the president's new personal involvement will be enough to muster the votes.
Dana Bash, CNN, Capitol Hill.
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VELSHI: When we come back, we are going to take a look at Senator Scott Brown, who is campaigning with Senator John McCain in Arizona. As you know, both Senator McCain and Scott Brown were anti-stimulus. John McCain is facing a tough election. Did stimulus actually help Arizona? Josh Levs will get to the bottom of it when we come back.
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VELSHI: Josh Levs has been working on the Stim Desk. He's the guy guys like me go to. I go through life with people calling me kind of a business numbers nerd, so when I want to feel cool, I call Josh in.
JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's my role.
VELSHI: Josh does nothing but crunch the stimulus numbers. He has no friends anymore, all he does is crunch stimulus numbers. What you're looking at is something interesting. Brand-new senator, Republican senator Scott Brown, from Massachusetts, gets elected, gets elected talking about how stimulus created no jobs at all --
LEVS: Very against it.
VELSHI: He's very popular.
LEVS: So, is John McCain talked out against the stimulus. So, we thought we would look at what it's really done for Arizona. But the real key here is that what we're going to tell you applies to every state in the country. This is a microcosm - we can go right to these numbers -- but in Arizona, you are having the same battle in your state. No matter where you are.
VELSHI: Surprise, surprise. Josh has big numbers on TV.
LEVS: I know. All you need to know is that they have gotten $3.4 billion out of the stimulus, and they've already received $1 billion. The next screen shows you how many jobs Arizona is saying is funded by the stimulus, and basically 6,300 jobs funded by the stimulus.
Now, let's look at what happened to unemployment in Arizona. And Ali, this is where we get into the debate, is it working or not? January 2009, unemployment was eight percent. Now January 2010, 9.2 percent. So people against the stimulus say, whoa. If it were working, why wouldn't it have gone down and not up?
VELSHI: Well, I got to tell you. I'm not wading into the argument here. But it is not really a valid argument to say that, because the stimulus is something done to help the economy and you can agree with whether or not it didn't, but the economy is still bigger than stimulus.
LEVS: Well, the economy is bigger than stimulus, but the fact is that it is hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars and the people who are arguing, which is a point, if it is supposed to do as much as it is supposed to -- it's called the Recovery Act -- wouldn't we see more?
I do want to mention, the rate of job losses has slowed in Arizona. Supporters of the stimulus will say therefore it is doing its job. But obviously both angles are out there. And the fact is that the same debate in Arizona today is happening in your state and every state in the country.
VELSHI: And others will tell you and there are some who say, it wouldn't have mattered if you didn't bring the stimulus in, because the economy was going to start to recover. So, there are a million ways to look at this one. But it probably is not fair to say, as you may hear on TV, that stimulus didn't create any jobs in Arizona.
LEVS: There's no doubt that stimulus dollars are paying for jobs. The bigger question is will the stimulus package do enough to make up for all of the long-term damage of all that debt? Will it cause a recovery because is the Recovery Act factually to be done for all of the stimulus dollars.
VELSHI: OK, very good. Well, it really is good that you are on this, because a, we are digging into this and learning a lot of stuff, and b, it makes me feel a lot less nerdy about somebody who spends his days --
LEVS: I really have to do something about this.
VELSHI: -- looking at the stimulus report.
LEVS: I think it's just the glasses.
VELSHI: Good to see you, buddy! Josh Levs.
All right. Let's look at this guy. Graham Flanagan - where is Graham - is he up? All right. Graham Flanagan, who is in our New York bureau and this is one of the producers extraordinaire, but mostly the reason we love Graham is because he is an aficionado when it comes to movies and entertainment. He is going to give us his picks. He is not a critic, but he loves the movies. So he will give us his picks for Oscars when we come back.
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VELSHI: Now, a few months ago actually was interviewing Colonel (INAUDIBLE) the character -- the man who played him in "Avatar," and the interview was booked very late and I couldn't get to see the movie. I have since seen it. I could not get to see it. And I didn't know what to do.
And I found the answer, because I went to an old friend of mine, Graham Flanagan, who is a resident film fan at CNN. He's not officially a critic, although I don't know why, because he knows more about the movies than anyone I know. Graham in his own time, in that sort of 12-hour period we have, went to see the movie and then basically briefed me on it and told me everything about the movie and the interview went very well, and I felt like I had seen it.
Graham, you will be proud to know I have since seen the movie, although I have not seen as many as you have, which is what makes you the perfect guy to tell us what will happen at the Oscars. You have it all lined up, and you have done the odds.
GRAHAM FLANAGAN, CNN ASSOCIATE PRODUCER AND MOVIE BUFF: Yes, I have seen all ten of the nominated films. It is kind of interesting that this year there are ten nominees as opposed to five. We haven't seen ten nominees since 1943, the year that Casablanca won.
VELSHI: Wow. Okay. Let's go through what your picks are for some of these. What are your picks for best picture? I am guessing that you think that "Avatar" is going to win. Do you think they should win?
FLANAGAN: Well, I think that what should win is "Precious." It is powerful. It's tough to watch, but eventually, it is an uplifting movie with great performances throughout. And I thought it was a really original, stylized piece of cinema, but I think that "Avatar" will win. I think that back in 2000, James Cameron said he had this idea for a movie that would come out much later to change the game, and he followed through. It just passed the $700 million mark, and it was embraced by critics and audiences, so I think that it will triumph over the contender "The Hurt Locker" for sure.
VELSHI: Okay. Well, that's a good point on "Precious." We've been hearing a lot of talk on that. Let's go to best director. Who do you think should win for best director?
FLANAGAN: Again, I think that James Cameron should win for "Avatar." Like I said, he changed the game with this movie and delivered on the hype he created a decade ago. So he deserves it, but I think that his ex-wife and the director of "The Hurt Locker" Kathryn Bigelow will win, because I think a lot of people want to make it the first year that a woman accepts the Oscar for best director, and it will be a special night.
VELSHI: All right. Let's talk about best actor. Who do you think should win and who do you think will win?
FLANAGAN: I think that Jeff Bridges for "Crazy Heart" should and will win. I think he is the strongest contender in the category. So, I would have no problem voting for him if I had the ballot, but a lot of people are calling this a sympathy Oscar, and I don't really think that is fair. I think it is a great performance in an underrated movie. So, I think that his greatest performance of all time was as The Dude in "The Big Lebowski," but I have no problem with him winning, and I think we will see him up there Saturday night.
VELSHI: What about best actress -- who do you think will win and who should win?
FLANAGAN: Well, I think that Gabourey Sidbe should win for "Precious." I think it's probably, along with Mo'Nique's performance in that movie the best performance of the year. But I think the momentum is with Sandra Bullock for "The Blind Side." And I think that a lot of that momentum has to do with the fact that "The Blind Side" was a such a popular movie. The fact that she had another smash-hit movie this year with "The Proposal" -
VELSHI: Right.
FLANAGAN: -- and there is a lot of politics involved in that. But you know, I think that Sandra Bullock, this is not going to be her last chance, and I think that she knows that. She will be back at the Oscars one day, but I would like to see a moment where Sandra Bullock takes her Oscar and says, "You know what? Gabourey Sidbe, come up here and get the recognition you deserve." I would like to see that, kind of reminiscent of when Ving Rames handed his Golden Globe over to Jack Lemmon at the Golden Globes. I'd really like to see something like that happen.
VELSHI: And finally, what do you think was the most overlooked film this year?
FLANAGAN: Overlooked by the academy, I was really surprised when Disney's "A Christmas Carol" didn't show up in the best animated feature category. Honestly, this is my pick for my favorite film of 2009 is Disney's "A Christmas Carol" by Robert Zemeckis (ph). And a lot of people won't agree with me, but I think that it was so faithful to the original text of Dickens' story, and you combine with the cutting edge technology that Robert Zemeckis (ph) and his 3-D motion capture team have been building over the years, and I think it was just the perfect marriage of content and technology. And I can't wait to see it again.
I think it is sad that it didn't make it into that category.
VELSHI: I can't believe in all the years I've known you, we haven't gone to a movie together. Graham, great stuff. We're going to keep a tab of everything you've said. I'm keeping these notes with me.
