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Oil Slick to be Burned Off; Maryland Hospitals Cheaper Than Neighboring States; Euro in Trouble after Greek Bonds Downgraded?

Aired April 28, 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: I've got to turn it over to this man but I can't do it without telling you, you, Christine, the money team, terrific yesterday out of D.C.

ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you.

HARRIS: And I can't wait for your analysis on the day after the Goldman hearings.

VELSHI: Thank you, my friend. Good to be back here. Good to see you. Thank you. Have a great afternoon, as always.

All right. Here's what I've got. I'm Ali Velshi. I'm going to be with you the next two hours today and every weekday. And what I'm going to do is try and take all of these important topics we cover and break it down for you. I'll try and give you a level of detail that will help you put your community and your world into context.

Let's get started. Here's what I've got on the rundown right now.

Arizona's tough new immigration law is on the books across the state. But one sheriff is not planning to book anybody. He says he's not going to enforce it, and he is willing to face the consequences.

Plus, Greece is in the red. The country's debt is proving to be contagious. And you can best the rest of Europe -- and, by the way, the U.S. -- are not immune. Richard Quest joining us to bring it home and break it down.

Also, we know it can be tough to keep your personal information personal on the Internet, but you might not realize just how many privacy land mines there are out there. And new social media rules, new gadgets mean new land mines everyday.

Let's get started, and let's start with Arizona. It started as Arizona Senate Bill 1070, but the ripples over what you know better as Arizona's new illegal immigration bill are felt all of the way to Capitol Hill today. Here is where the story stands right now.

Let's get started in Pima County, Arizona. You can see it on the map right at the bottom near the border. Next hour, the sheriff of this county is going to make an announcement about the law that he said he is not going to go along with. Here's why.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF CLARENCE DUPNIK, PIMA COUNTY, ARIZONA: It would be irresponsible, in my opinion, to put people in the Pima County jail at local taxpayer expense when I can give them to the Border Patrol, which is what we do now in greater numbers than any other law enforcement agency in this state.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: OK. Let me take you back to the map now for a second. We've highlighted the border. This is the border between Arizona and Mexico. You already know everything to do with the border is a heated issue on Capitol Hill. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDE CLIP)

REP. RAUL GRIJALVA (D), ARIZONA: Politicians on the floor of the House continue to use this issue to exploit and to divide and to drive wedges. I think we're here today to say it is time to deal with comprehensive reform realistically, look for solutions, and begin a process of healing in this country. If we let this continue to go unattended, what happened in Arizona will be replicated in other parts of the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can only deal with other issues like immigration when you stop people coming into the United States illegally. That's a border security issue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: So how did we get here, to the point of one state deciding that it needed its own legislation? Well, we're going to talk about that through the course of the show. We are going to -- I'm just asking my executive producer where we're going right now. We want to talk about oil.

All right. Let's talk about oil. This is another big story that we're working on. Oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 42,000 gallons a day. This is the current oil slick from last week's rig explosion. The oil slick is now about 600 miles around. It's floating. The closest point to land is about 23 miles off the coast of Louisiana.

And right now crews are launching their plans to burn the oil off the water. Now, they had to make the hard decision about burning it or leaving it to evaporate. What's worse: air pollution from burning the oil or the oil slick that can severely damage wildlife and the delicate ecosystem along the Gulf shoreline?

Now, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, birds and mammals can handle a temporary smoke plume better than they can handle an oil slick. When it comes to pollution from the burn, NOAA says there -- there is some tradeoff. It creates air pollution, but not burning the oil would allow the slick to spread. Let's talk about how you burn oil on water. Four conditions have to be met. First of all, the oil layer has to be at least two millimeters thick. If it's not thick enough, it won't generate the heat, and it won't catch fire.

And I just want to show you. We sort of exaggerated it to make the point here. But I've got a glass and I've got oil on the top of it. This is more than two millimeters, but just to give you some sense of it in perspective, if this were sort of the ocean, it would need to be more like this one on your left. You've got to have enough oil to actually burn off. Otherwise it won't ignite. It won't give off enough heat. And the result is that it won't catch fire. So the oil actually has to catch fire in order to burn.

Whatever you're using to ignite the oil has got to be hot enough, and it's got to last long enough to actually keep that fire going. So real challenge. There's water right there.

And third, the water to oil ratio has got to be no more than 50 percent.

The weather is the other issue. It's got to cooperate. You can't have the winds going the wrong way. You can't have too much wind. Otherwise, you're spreading that smoke plume all over the place.

When those conditions are met, the oil is collected with a series of boats and booms. So you can see the booms are attached to the boat. They're basically corralling the oil. And basically they scoop it together as -- get that oil as contained as they can. Move it away from the main oil slick and then they burn it, sections at a time.

If that doesn't work, by the way, we've got an issue. If it doesn't work, BP, who owned the oil that was coming off of that rig, is working on a dome-shaped pollution containment chamber that will be used in an attempt to contain the oil leak. The chamber will be the largest ever built.

Let's go to Reynolds Wolf. He's live in Venice, Louisiana, following this all very closely. They started that burn yet, Reynolds?

REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, it was supposed to get under way about an hour ago. And the thing is, when you have something that you were talking about, an oil slick that is that expansive. As Chad Myers mentioned last hour, it's about the size of the state of Delaware. What exactly do you target? What do you go for?

Well, there is that oily sheen that has a rainbowish like effect, and they call it that rainbow sheen. But see, the thing is, that is actually about as thin or thinner than a layer of paint you might have on your house. And that makes up about 95 -- I'm sorry, 97 percent of the slick.

But then you've got, let's see, 3 percent to deal with. And that would be, of course, the heavier amounts. The heavier amounts of oil. And that is what they're going to be skimming off, the crude and that is what they're burning today.

They've got to get to this, because this is affecting people, of course, not just, again, in this area but it's affecting people far away. I mean, some of this is being carried by upper level winds. There are people -- reports of people in Florida, parts of Alabama, even into Mississippi, obviously here in Louisiana, smelling some of the fumes. It is an amazing thing. Touch on one thing we talked about. The process of getting the crude, pulling it away from the main patch. They really do have to be careful when they do this. Obviously, it's flammable.

And as they do pull it away they are really going to isolate it. They're going to do several of these. Not just one. Each one is going to last 16 minutes or so. Maybe some a little bit longer. Some a little bit less. But it's something that do mention they're going to watch very carefully.

And you mentioned also the Environmental Protection Agency. They will be monitoring this. For all the reasons you've stated, but also just to make sure that the workers themselves are safe. It looks like anyone might be endanger, they're going to extinguish the fires immediately. So it is an amazing thing to see. No question about it. But desperate times call for desperate measures and questions.

VELSHI: So Reynolds, they're not -- just to be clear, they're not setting the whole thing on fire at once. They are isolating bits and doing this piecemeal?

WOLF: Precisely. Absolutely. Yes. Just little pieces at little times. I will tell you that I had a chance yesterday with photojournalist Steve Sorg (ph) to actually team up with a Coast Guard crew and we actually flew out above the slick and we had video we've been showing people. It's amazing to see the contrast of the cobalt blue water. And then you'll see, again, that sheen of oil. And then every now and then you'll see the telltale sign of the thick, almost ropes of heavy oil. Almost like a reddish Brown color. That's really the key thing they're looking for.

Scary thing is you have to remember that there's a -- it's not an estimate; it's more like a guesstimate of the amount of oil that continues to erupt from far below, about 5,000 feet below the surface of the water, saying roughly that yesterday about 1,000 barrels of oil per day.

So they got a long way to go before they clean this up. And it was earlier that the Coast Guard was estimating that it may take up to 90 days before they find some great answers for this. And it's going to be certainly a tall order.

Back to you.

VELSHI: All right, Reynolds, we'll stay on top of it. Thanks very much. This is a very, very big story, and Reynolds is right on top of it for us. All right. A procedure that might cost you hundreds of dollars in Maryland could cost you thousands of dollars in New Jersey. Why is there such a big price gap? We're going to find out when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Would you ever spend your hard-earned money in a store that charges you triple their cost for everything they sell? You probably wouldn't. But every day, thousands of Americans are doing just that when they check into hospitals. Hospitals in this country, on average, charge 180 percent of their costs for services, except in Maryland.

Senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen paid a visit.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm here at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Now, let's say that they brought someone in here who just had a heart attack. It costs a certain amount of money to treat that person: the drugs, the nurses, all of that.

Now, Hopkins, like other hospitals, on top of that, charges a profit margin, a mark-up, if you will. And now to talk about these mark-ups, I'm here with Professor Gerard Anderson.

Now tell me, how much of a mark-up does Hopkins and other hospitals in Maryland charge?

GERARD ANDERSON, PROFESSOR: Twenty-one percent.

COHEN: Twenty-one percent. Now, other hospitals in other states in the country, do they also charge a 21 percent mark-up?

ANDERSON: No, it's only Maryland that does it. Other states, the mark-ups are much higher.

COHEN: Much higher. OK. Well, I'm going to got take a tour of states around Maryland to see how much it costs there to have a heart attack.

Now I've just crossed the line into Delaware, where they mark up prices by 85 percent. And remember, in Maryland, they only mark up prices by 21 percent. But wait, it gets even worse.

Just cross the line into Pennsylvania, and they have a 277 percent mark-up. This heart attack is getting very expensive. But wait, we still have one more state to go.

In New Jersey, hospitals hike their prices higher than any other state in the country, 326 percent.

I wanted to understand why hospitals mark up their prices this way, so I've come here to ask the president of the American Hospital Association.

Nationally, markups are 180 percent, we're told. That just seems -- to most consumers, that just seems like a huge markup.

RICHARD UMBDENSTOCK, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION: You'll find markups in every walk of life. And it depends upon the variables: the cost of providing that particular service, and the fact of how much do you actually, in fact, then get paid.

COHEN: Other states right next to Maryland charge so much more than what they charge in Maryland.

UMBDENSTOCK: Everyone doesn't have the same type of payment system that Maryland has.

COHEN: So professor Anderson, how does Maryland keep its markups so low?

ANDERSON: Well, there is the state government, and they establish the rates for each hospital in Maryland.

COHEN: So Maryland takes care of patients more inexpensively. So let's not forget about the patient here. Does that hurt our patient that Maryland is spending less money on them?

ANDERSON: No, in fact, the quality of care at Johns Hopkins, the quality of care in the hospitals in Maryland is all quite good.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: That's incredible. That was a good question: does it hurt the patient? This was such a big thing during the health-care debate that if somehow we manage prices, cap prices, governments negotiate prices, there is definitely a sense amongst people that that's going to somehow affect my care. In other words, the 21 percent mark-up can't possibly be as good as the 377 percent mark-up.

COHEN: Right. But people come from all over the world to go to Johns Hopkins. Right?

VELSHI: Very interesting.

COHEN: The care is good. The care is fabulous. So it obviously doesn't seem to be affecting the care. I mean, that's what we kept hearing.

VELSHI: The thing that I've heard from the AMA gentleman that you spoke to, though, was that the payment systems. Does that mean Maryland has a system where the hospitals actually get paid for the procedures that they perform?

COHEN: They get paid differently. And so what the gentleman from the American Hospital Association was -- went on to explain --

VELSHI: Yes. COHEN: -- is that in Maryland they basically say, "Look, no matter who your patient is, we're going to allow you to charge a 21 percent markup, whether they're uninsured, on Medicare -- "

VELSHI: Right.

COHEN: "-- on Medicaid, whatever." That's what they get paid. Whereas in other states it's basically just a totally -- just like a free-for-all.

VELSHI: Yes.

COHEN: Like, they negotiate -- each hospital negotiates separately with all of the different payers. So that's -- it's very complicated, but it's a completely different way of doing it.

VELSHI: So if you're on the other side of this, and I guess the AMA is, because I'm sitting here saying why can't everybody just do this like Maryland?

COHEN: Right.

VELSHI: Why can't everybody just do this like Maryland.

COHEN: Well, The American Hospital Association --

VELSHI: I'm sorry.

COHEN: That's OK.

VELSHI: American Hospital, not the AMA.

COHEN: Right. The American Hospital Association says, "Look, a bunch of other states tried this. They tried the Maryland model--"

VELSHI: Yes.

COHEN: "-- in the '70s and '80s." And you know what? They didn't like it. They went right back to the way they were doing things before.

And the reason why they didn't like it, or one of the big reasons was that hospitals said, "Whoa, we're not making as much money as we used to."

VELSHI: Right. Sure.

COHEN: "We don't like this so much. Let's go back to the other way of doing things." So hospitals definitely, when this kind of a system is put in for the first time, they -- they take a blow.

VELSHI: All right. Very good. You are our expert on health- care cost, which is such a big part of all of our health-care reform. Thanks, Elizabeth. Good to see you.

All right. Junk bonds. In Greece, what's that got to do with your money? CNN's Richard Quest is going to help me connect those dots after the break. And believe me, they are much more closely connected than you might think.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right. Let's get you caught up with some of the top stories we're following right here at CNN.

President Obama continues his push for changes on Wall Street. Financial reform is the hot topic right now, from a bill that is on the Hill to the grilling of Goldman Sachs management yesterday. In the next hour, President Obama speaks in Missouri on the need for financial overhaul. CNN will bring his speech to you live.

And the U.S. is getting its first offshore wind farm in a step toward more alternative energy. Nineteen wind turbines will be set up off the coast of Cape Cod. The project had met with heavy resistance from people who say it will endanger wildlife and mar the historic views.

And former first lady Laura Bush says that she and then president George W. Bush may have once been poisoned. In her new memoir, she says that the couple's delegation got mysteriously ill after a visit to Germany. The president was even bedridden. She suspects poison was the cause.

All right. Talk about a sad sight. Spring flowers -- you know, spring flowers are a sad sight. Spring flowers being covered in snow in May is really what the issue is. Why is it still snowing in parts of the country? I saw Chad hanging around here a couple of minutes ago. When we come back we're going to ask him about what that's all about.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: All right. Today's look at your money takes us all the way around the world to Greece. Yesterday's 213-point plunge on the Dow followed word that Greece is now trying to finance its colossal deficit with junk bonds. Now essentially, that means that in view of Standard and Poor's, the rating agency, there is a high risk that Athens won't be able to pay its bondholders back, and that means the Greeks have got to offer ridiculous returns to people who invest in their bonds.

So what does that got to do with you? Well, Greece is far from alone when it comes to having huge debt that it continuously has to pay down or roll over and refinance. And that is taking a toll on the euro, because the euro is the common European currency. The euro is now at a one-year low against the dollar.

Who else is in trouble? Well, when it wrote off the Greek bonds as junk, S&P also downgraded bonds from Portugal. Not as severely. And today it downgraded Spain's. Euro zone partners Italy and Ireland are believed to be on shaky ground, too.

And so we turn to my European colleague, Richard Quest, who has been following a high-powered meeting today in Germany on what we might call my big fat Greek bailout. Richard joins us now.

Richard, tell me what's going on and how we're going to get out of this.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And we might also describe that meeting, which has just come to an end, as my big fat the check is not in the mail.

VELSHI: Oh.

QUEST: Angela Merkel sitting there with Dominick Strauss-Kahn of the IMF, Bob Zoellick of the World Bank, the head of the WTO, Uncle Tom Cobbly (ph) and all. Anyone and everyone was there.

But the reality is Angela Merkel still is the chancellor of Germany, still saying that Greece needs to do more as part of its austerity measures, that the proper position needs to be determined, and it all has to be done because of the stability of the euro threat.

There are commentators writing tonight in Europe that literally are saying they are fiddling while the euro is burning.

VELSHI: All right. What -- what potential effect could this have? Because there -- I don't know of a country, a major industry that doesn't have -- major industrialized country that doesn't have debt.

Is there some kind of a rolling effect to this that one should be worried about in Western Europe and Great Britain and even in the United States?

QUEST: A lot depends on how the debt is structured. If you look at, for example, the U.S. and certainly the U.K., a lot of the debt is long-dated date so there's no refinancing or not major refinancing any time soon.

And what it really comes down to, is there a credible plan to pay down the debt? It's likely -- it's just as you and me having a mortgage or an overdraft. Does our bank manager think that we can pay it back--

VELSHI: Right.

QUEST: -- and have we proved our ability to do so?

And what they're basically saying in Greece's case at the moment is that that's not the case.

If there was to be a restructuring and default, the ramifications are so colossal in Europe with the euro zone that nobody wants to think about it.

From the American point of view, instability in the European community, it creates difficulties for your markets sending stuff over here.

VELSHI: Right.

QUEST: And finally, finally, there's just a glimmer, which of course the administration is well aware of, that it's never too soon to start working out how you're going to pay down the debt.

VELSHI: Great idea. Yes, we think that that's -- it might be beneficial if the euro is low. But that makes it harder for Europeans to buy American goods, travel to the United States.

Listen, here's the fascinating story for us. The selection in Great Britain. Before you say anything, I want to -- I want to just play this sound of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's encounter with a widow, a woman named Jillian Duffy. Let's listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JILLIAN DUFFY, WIDOW: You can't say anything about the immigrants because you're saying that -- all of these Eastern Europeans were coming in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: OK. So he's talking to this woman, Jillian Duffy, having a conversation with her, and then -- I see a black hole where Richard was. Is he still with us? OK.

Well, listen, we're getting Richard back. I want to play the second part of it.

QUEST: What happened?

VELSHI: So Richard, you saw this. No, we're back. We're back. We're all good. I see you. You're all good.

So, Richard, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is having this -- he's in the middle of a campaign, having this conversation with this woman who is bringing up the issue of immigration to the prime minister. Now let's listen to what happened right after that. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GORDON BROWN, PRIME MINSTER OF THE U.K. Thanks very much.

It's a disaster. Should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know; didn't see her.

BROWN: Sue, I think. It's just ridiculous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not sure they'll go with that.

BROWN: They will go with it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did she say?

BROWN: Everything. She's just a bigoted woman. Said she used to be Labour.

I mean, it's just ridiculous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: This is always an issue. There's a microphone on him. He didn't turn that microphone off. He didn't put it away. He got back in his car and referred to Jillian Duffy as bigoted for her comments.

Now he's apologized for that. I don't know whether I feel better that he's apologized or I feel worse that he's not owning the fact that he clearly thought she was a bigot.

QUEST: And we don't know tonight in Britain whether it's the game changer of the election. Because Gordon Brown had been -- he's been caught out not only for saying something offensive about a voter, but also for being two-faced, because when he left the woman, he said how much he'd enjoyed meeting her, how good the discussion had been, how marvelous it had all gone.

Then he gets in the car, calls it ridiculous, wishes he'd never met her, says it was a disaster, and calls her a bigot to boot.

Tonight he's saying that he is a sinner who -- and he's apologized and all of that. Overnight, we will find out what the -- what the polls make of it.

But you know, Ali, ever since Ronald Reagan with the famous "Where should we stop bombing in 20 minutes" or whatever it was --

VELSHI: Yes, yes.

QUEST: -- microphone gaffe, ever since anyone who's ever walked into a bathroom without taking their microphone off has known about that, that the prime minister could have done this.

VELSHI: Here's the interesting thing. He -- in his apology he said he misunderstood her question. You know, we on this side of the pond think you guys talk funny. Once in a while we might misunderstand you. But he's from the same side of the pond.

QUEST: Well, he is from Scotland. So some might say that -- he was in the north of England which can be difficult to understand.

No, look, if you are in a hole and it is a deep hole, and things are being poured on top of you, you'll do anything you can to get out of it. Particularly when tomorrow night is the last debate. And also, of course, he is backed on the popular vote, running third in the polls. This could be the turning point, the disaster, the calamity, or -- or it might just fade away as just one of those things.

VELSHI: We're going to keep talking about this. Thanks, Richard. Good to see you, my friend. Richard Quest on the other side of the pond. I felt like I understood him fine without any subtitles. All right, Richard, we'll talk to you again.

Listen, changes coming tomorrow. Richard knows about this, too. Big penalties for airlines. This is something that affects every air traveler in the nation. We're less than 24 hours away from, well, maybe quicker trips. Let's hope so.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Okay, yesterday if you were watching the news, you know that an aircraft, Delta flight 273, on its way from Paris to Atlanta was diverted. Atlanta then Bangor, Maine. And a person was taken into custody. National security correspondent Jeanne Meserve now with the latest on that story. Jeanne?

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Ali, we just got a affidavit that were filed in U.S. district court in Bangor relating to the case of this individual, Derek Stansbury. Fascinating detail about what happened on the plane yesterday.

According to the affidavit, he passed a note to a flight attendant which said -- I'm going to read from this -- "I am not an American citizen. I was there Uega (ph) illegally. My passports and identity are fake. I bought this bag on eBay and have no association with the United States. I will take whatever COA the U.S. wants. I will leave my wallet and passport on this aircraft. Please let me family know the truth. I" -- and then there's an expletive here, which I will not say -- "I blanked up and I left the HN preside over prosecutions and that I love them."

At that point, the flight attendant turns to the federal air marshals, who takes this individual into custody. Stansbury then, according to this affidavit, tells the air marshal that he had dynamite in his boots, which were located in his backpack. He also told the air marshal he had a presser switched to detonate the dynamite. He also said there were explosives in his laptop bag.

We know from other passengers onboard the flight at that point they built a bunker around his backpack with blankets and pillows on board that flight. It then goes on in this affidavit to say that when he was questioned later, Stansbury believed that people on board the plane had been following him and ridiculing him, trying to interrogate him. It says he said he decided to claim he had a bomb in order to divert attention from the fact that he had classified information.

And then what may be the most telling paragraph, according to this FBI agent, who filed this affidavit, Stansbury told him he had taken one Ambien earlier in the day, but the federal air marshal later indicated that Stansbury told them he had taken eight Ambien and previously used Valium, but not on the flight. So, that's the latest details of what happened yesterday.

VELSHI: Ambien is a sleeping tablet. He says, I will take whatever COA the U.S. wants. I assume he means course of action?

MESERVE: That's what I would assume. There's a lot of military jargon in here. VELSHI: And what's the thing where he said, "I'll let the HN preside over prosecution."

MESERVE: I have not a clue, Ali. I'm not sure that everybody does. It mentions in here that some of what he said was hard to say because he talked so much in military jargon. He seemed to have trouble keeping things in chronological order.

VELSHI: Wow. All right.

This wouldn't fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation under new regulation that's coming in tomorrow that is going to manage how airlines spend time on tarmac with passengers. So, the new regulation doesn't apply to whether or not there's somebody making threats on your plane. But for everybody else, things might change oz of tomorrow.

MESERVE: Yes, it's going to be good news for travelers. Either you've lived the horror story or you've heard the horror story of being delayed on the tarmac for hours and hours, maybe because of bad weather or congestion or flight scheduling. New rules that are going to go into effect tomorrow hopefully will mean something better. Though there are those in the industry who say they will have unintended consequences.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: Videos posted on YouTube reportedly capture the discomforts of hours of waiting on a plane on the tarmac.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've had people vomiting and passing out. There are infants on the plane.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, God. This is a nightmare.

MESERVE: Passenger rights advocate Kate Hanni believes incidents like this may happen as many as ten times a day.

KATE HANNI, FLYERSRIGHTS.ORG: Airline passengers have less rights than a prisoner of war per the Geneva Conventions, and to think otherwise is defying what we've seen over and over again.

MESERVE: But starting Thursday, new rules from the Department of Transportation. Airlines are prohibited from keeping passengers on grounded planes for more than three hours with exceptions for safety and security.

After two hours, they are required to provide food and water. And if airlines don't comply, they could face fines of $27,000 per passenger, fines that could add up to as much as $3.7 million per flight. The transportation secretary is taking the step because he says airlines have been ignoring their passengers.

RAY LAHOOD, U.S. SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION: We're fed up with it. We're not going to wait for some law to be passed because sometimes that takes a long time. We have the jurisdiction other the airlines. We felt it was incumbent upon us to pay attention to passengers.

MESERVE: The airline industry says it will comply with the rules, but because carriers will not want to risk the massive fines, it could mean more cancellations, more missed connections, more lost bags, and more headaches for travelers. Kate Hanni isn't buying it.

HANNI: I think it's laughable that they actually think they can scare the flying public into thinking that the conditions with our rule are going to be worse than the conditions we already have.

MESERVE: And those conditions can be grim, indeed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a long line going for the runway.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MESERVE: And Kate Hanni has already picked her next battle. She's outraged that airlines are considering charging passengers to use restrooms. She promises to fight that tooth and nail. Ali?

VELSHI: That one is going to be interesting. All right. Thanks very much, Jeanne. We'll keep an eye on the new regulations as they come in place tomorrow. Jeanne Meserve, our national security correspondent.

OK. Teenager shot by someone he knew. As he lay dying on the street, he refused to give up the name. Is refusing to snitch a cause for Chicago's surging murder rate? And what, if anything, can be done to break the silence? Roland Martin, who has been on top of this for a long time joins me to talk about it after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VELSHI: Turning now to the deadly streets of Chicago. Murders are up again with no end to the violence in sight. We told you about the two Illinois congressmen who said the violence has become so rampant they want to call in the National Guard. It's not likely to happen, but what makes this especially alarming, many of the victims are teenagers. The recent shooting death of Robert Tate stands out. Listen to CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): On Chicago's West Side, Robert Tate, a 17-year-old from the neighborhood, had been shot in the chest. He was dying. A police officer came up to him and said, do you know who shot you? He said: "I know, but I'm not telling you." Paramedics tried to save him, but Robert Tate died.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VELSHI: Another example of the horror of this, if you need another example. Look at this. The beating death of a 16-year-old honor student, Darien Albert last year, captured on a cell phone camera. So far this year, there have been 113 murders in Chicago. That compares to 132 American servicemen and women killed this year in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These grim times are not new to the city. In 2009, in the school year, more than 36 public school students were killed. Marked the third straight year that youth homicides climbed into double digits. Another troubling trend. A lot of the teen violence happens away from school. Often as kids are walking to school or leaving at the end of the day.

There's a shocking aspect to this. Teens like the one you saw, Robert Tate, unwilling to snitch on their attacker. As he lay dying, unwilling to tell the police who shot him. The question is, how do you break this code of silence?

Joining us from Chicago, CNN analyst Roland Martin, he's host of "Washington Watch" and syndicated columnist. Roland, good to see you, my friend. You've been on this story --

ROLAND MARTIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, Ali, how's it going?

VELSHI: Good, thank you. You've been on this story a long time. We were talking about it last summer.

MARTIN: Yes.

VELSHI: First of all, help me get my head around this kid who is dying and won't tell the police who shot him.

MARTIN: Well, this speaks to a culture that exists only in Chicago, but all across the country where you have mistrust, this whole notion of you don't snitch, you don't tell. It is ludicrous, it is crazy, makes no sense whatsoever.

And so, this is what continues the level of violence because you have people committing murders who never go to jail because no one wants to talk. So, folks in the community that -- in many ways there's a code, if you will, a code of the streets, you don't talk.

VELSHI: All right. Roland, when you were talking about -- I learn more about the discussions you would have with people about this from anyone else. This is partially a policing issue? It's a lot to do with schools, it's a lot to do with communities. Where does the answer lie to try and break this code?

MARTIN: I think first and foremost, you have a look at this whole issue from holistic standpoint. In the short term, you must have a surge in these most violent communities where you simply flood the zone with police officers. That means setting up roadblocks. That means checking IDs. That means searching cars.

Now, here's what also needs to happen. These are largely African-American and Hispanic neighborhoods when you're seeing this outbreak of violence. The people there are going have to frankly -- and let me be very clear -- shut the hell up by complaining about a significant police presence. You cannot on one hand complain about violence and saying you're living in dead zones, you're living in a war zone, but then you complain about the prison industrial complex. Look, I understand the numbers of black kids going to prison, and I can't stand that. But the reality is when you have kids dropping out of school, being in gangs, who are now illiterate, who are now selling drugs, who are on the streets all of a sudden, there's a propensity of violence there. So, short-term, you've got to get the violence under control. The second piece --

VELSHI: Hold it a second. Hold the second piece for a second. I want to talk about it after the break. The other thing is, this call for the National Guard and the fact there's a challenge in Chicago by allowing handguns to be sold inside the city. I want to talk to you about both of those thing, but I want to talk about the second piece right after this. Roland is going to be with us on the other side of this break.

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VELSHI: Okay. Roland is back. Roland Martin, by the way, CNN analyst, is also author of the first "Barack Obama's Road to the White House." Roland, I stopped you in the middle of the a sentence because you were giving a solution and the second part of the solution to dealing with this violence in Chicago. Go ahead.

MARTIN: Yes. I think the first -- second phase is, what you then have to do is create the community partnerships that late Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson did in that particular city, where he looked at a one-, three-, five-, ten-year approach. That is, you take the most violent neighborhoods and say, okay, how can we then infuse these particular neighborhoods with resources but also partnership with the people who live there? That is, community centers, community activists.

Because the police cannot do it alone. You've got to create a culture in these neighborhoods where people say this is our neighborhood, and we're going to take it back. What that means is, you've got to have community policing. You've got to have citizens patrol. You've got to have people willing to call in when they see drug activity. When they see violence --

VELSHI: How much of that do we have? You know the South Side very well. How much of that exists? Is there an infrastructure upon which it can be built?

MARTIN: Well, first of all, you have the South Side, you have the West Side, you have the same thing happening in the suburbs. You do have the infrastructure, but you've got to have the political leaders willing to sit down with the community leaders and say, we are in this thing together. But you can't have community leaders saying it's only your job.

You then also -- I say this very clear. You've got to have churches, also, that are simply not open just on Sunday or Wednesday for Bible study. If you have an education issue, you must be creating tutorial programs in these churches. Utilize the retired teachers, those who also want to assist. But you've also got to have the men of these churches willing to step up, and the men's ministry and saying we are going to mentor and deal with these young men right now. The moment they come out of the womb all of the way up because, frankly, we have kids with no father at home no, real supervision.

VELSHI: You always held the few this responsibility has to be shared between civil authorities and the community. Let me ask you about this one.

MARTIN: That's the only way.

VELSHI: Let me ask you about this one. Seems there are ample guns in Chicago at the moment. Where do you come in on this business of people allowing guns to be sold in Chicago on the understanding that if people have guns, if regular civilians are allowed to have guns, it might stop somebody trying to attack them?

MARTIN: Yes, but the reality is -- and, look, I support gun control. I have no issue with that. I don't think people saying I need 10, 15, 20 guns. To me, that's nonsense.

But I will say this here. The reality is, the people -- the violence that's taking place, they're not going to gun shops. They're not going to the suburbs and buying a gun and bringing it to the city. There's an underground gun culture that is going on. What you have to do, you must tackle the enormous gang problem in this city.

Do you remember a few years ago after the L.A. riots when President Bush actually sat down with some gang leaders. And I'll go ahead and say it. Mayor Daley shared a public sit-down with gang leaders.

VELSHI: Wow.

MARTIN: Now, follow me here. Because -- that's your issue. You have throngs of men: Hispanics, African-American, whites, who are in these gangs. The problem with the kids being killed in Chicago, when you shut down schools in communities, they are now crossing gang zones. Chicago does not have a significant bus system here. And so you have a kid, that kid has to take a city bus or walk to a school. So, they're walking through gang zones.

If you don't look directly at the problem and say I'm going to sit down with these folks and make it clear that we have to confront it and then continue.

VELSHI: You tell Mayor Daley if he wants to do that, we'll put it on TV. It's an interesting idea.

MARTIN: No, no, no. (INAUDIBLE) That's conversation needs to be not on television, but the follow-up, then, to be on television. But it should be a frank conversation with those gang leaders because that's the fundamental problem in Chicago.

VELSHI: All right, Roland, good to talk to you. Roland Martin very passionate about it. He knows a lot about it. He's a CNN analyst and the author of the first, "President Barack Obama's Road to the White House." Roland, good to see you. Come back whenever you want to.

MARTIN: Thanks, Ali.

VELSHI: All right. The Internet. Fantastic at breaking down barriers and trying to connect with people. Not so fantastic that there are people out there trying to connect with your personal information, people you're not interested in having doing that. We're talking to Shelly Palmer. He's coming up next about the latest attempts to invade your privacy.

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VELSHI: All right. Seems like every day there's some new social media site, smart phone app something trying to seduce you to connect with people. And every time one of those comes along, new hackers and hustlers come along with it, trying to make a buck off you somehow. Some are con men, some are cyberfixtures.

Facebook rolled out a package of changes last week, changes that got some privacy activists and members of Congress riled up. Shelly Palmer, who follows this stuff for his TV and Web shows, joins us from New York. Shelly, you can always explain these things better than I can. First of all, Facebook -- tell me what this is. What are we talking about?

SHELLY PALMER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ADVANCED MEDIA VENTURES GROUP: Well, I think what we have is a very politicized privacy issue. All of a sudden, Congress, the Senate woke up and said, wow, here's something we can actually get our hands on and our teeth into. They're a little worried that there are certain applications in Facebook that just grab all of your private information when you install them, and they're a little upset about it.

And they think that rather than being automatically opted in, you should be automatically opted out. You should ask people's permission if you want to take their information. So, it's not necessarily cut and dried --

VELSHI: Right.

PALMER: -- but it is a huge issue.

VELSHI: And it's, by the way, making its way to Washington. Legislators are getting themselves involved in this.

PALMER: Do you know what, Ali? They really are, and I tell you what, they're doing so at everybody's peril. We're in a time now where we have data-driven creative, and we have data-driven services, location-based services. And part of the way this stuff works, it knows a little bit about you. It knows where you are, it knows basically the part of the country you're in, and it knows the kind of things you like to do. And when you use that information as an either an advertiser or content provider, you can make some really nice choices and make the content served a little more relevant. Truly, it can be abused, but it is not generally abused.

What the Congress and the Senate and the political people are kind of jumping on, wow, you're invading our privacy. Let's do something about it. You know what, Ali? I got to tell you. This is not something you should not jump on it without no knowing all the facts, and by the way, nobody goes all the facts.

VELSH: You have some great tips here, by the way. Go back to using pen and paper. Use smoke signals or carrier pigeons if you want to stay safe. Bottom line, that's true. You have a couple here that interest me. Do you really mean it when you say people shouldn't download anything?

PALMER: Look, if you are really trying to be -- these are two separate issues, the Facebook isse and now, of course, the personal privacy. If you are worried about, for example, the new Wi-Fi hot spot scam, which is you go, you think you are seeing a real AT&T hot spot and it turns out to be a trojan and fake. Carry one of these. This is your own little my-fi, wi-fi hotspot. It goes on a 3G network. You're secure.

Or just carry a cell phone and use the cell phone or the smart phone and use it as your way to get onto the Internet. You shouldn't be getting on networks that you don't know about, and that includes, by the way, public free networks in airports or in certain retail stores. This stuff is not secure right now.

What happens is it doesn't hurt you where you are. You take your iPad and you logon and all of a sudden you say, wow, what's going on here? You attach it to your computer and a trojan gets into your computer from that network, so right now it's a little Wild West. A little it's -- it's actually very Wild West.

VELSHI: We'll have you on to talk about it more about it regularly. Shelly, good to see you. Thanks as always.

PALMER: It's great to be here, Ali. Thank you very much.

VELSHI: Shelly Palmer is the host of "Digital Life with Shelly Palmer." Check it out.

Listen, Main Street, Wall Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, all of them intersecting in Macon, Missouri, today. In just a few moments President Obama talks about reining in big banks and how it could protect your bottom line. We'll weigh the pros and cons.

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