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Keeping Track of the Stimulus; Federal Judge Strikes Down Government's Authority to Finance Stem-Cell Research; Rebuilding the Levees; Recovery Act Impact; Wordplay: Nameplay Dickey-Wicker; XYZ: To Restore Honor Parties Should Promote Tolerance & Equality
Aired August 24, 2010 - 13:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Another big money issue today we want to talk about. Vice President Biden out there talking about the stimulus, something that's been coming under some attack lately, Josh, because people are saying the economy hasn't turned around, the jobs are not there, our unemployment rate is still high. Was that stimulus a waste of money?
You and I spent many a day and night dealing very specifically with jobs created by the stimulus. We haven't visited it for awhile, so do that for us.
JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And the White House is doing it again. I mean, ostensively (ph) today was the vice president talking about $100 billion going to innovative energy programs, but what it was really the administration coming out and trying to remind everyone in their view that to have the stimulus and that it's done a lot for the economy. In fact, Vice President Biden said this, take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nobody anymore argues whether or not there would be 3 million fewer people working today than there are now working but for the Recovery Act. No serious economist is making that argument any longer. The economy has been growing for a full year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVS: Now, this is how the administration feels. I was surprised he said that, though, that no serious economist --
VELSHI: Right. I've heard a few.
LEVS: I mean, the thing is, you would have a hard time finding a serious economist who would say completely, definitely, three million people are working. Even the White House Council of Economic Advisors says somewhere between 2.4 million and 3.2 million. The CBO, Congressional Budget Office, totally nonpartisan, they say somewhere between 1.2 million, 2.8.
Can I take a second and show you the pictures?
VELSHI: Please. Yes.
LEVS: Because I want everyone to understand, when the White House talks about jobs and the stimulus, what they're doing is they're combining a bunch of stuff. Direct jobs --
VELSHI: So that is jobs --
LEVS: -- paid by the stimulus.
VELSHI: OK. That's a good way to point it, paid by the stimulus.
LEVS: Straight up right now.
Indirect jobs, the construction worker needs to buy a hammer. So the people who sell the hammers get some money. They're saying that, in their view, creates some jobs.
And then induced jobs, the guy who sells the hammer, and the construction worker can go to the grocery store. So they're saying, OK, ultimately, more jobs are induced that way.
So when they're giving these numbers about how it creates jobs, it really is these very broad guesstimations. And t here are other economists out there who say, you know what? We don't agree. We think this money could be flowing through the economy in a different way.
(CROSSTALK)
VELSHI: But in fairness to them, whatever the numbers are, this is exactly what we're supposed to be thinking, right? That you get some jobs, and then these people create wealth. And by doing the jobs they're doing --
LEVS: That's how it works.
VELSHI: -- it gives wealth to somebody else. And then there's a pizza joint that opens up because there are all these workers around and that creates induced jobs. So the pattern is correct.
LEVS: Oh, it's completely realistic to say that the only way to figure out the real economic impact is to look at all three kinds of things. The problem is, to be so hard and definite about three million jobs -- and keep in mind, unemployment is at about 9.5 percent.
VELSHI: Right.
LEVS: I was looking at the numbers. It was the same place a year ago. So there are those who say, hey, it should be doing a lot more. The White House counters and says, hey, it would be a lot worse were it not for this money.
VELSHI: But a year ago, the White House was saying that the unemployment number was going to be lower -- LEVS: Yes, they were.
VELSHI: -- as a result of this. So one doesn't know what forces come into play with the whole thing, but it definitely sometimes -- or, to some people and in some quarters, seems less certain than Vice President Biden put forth.
LEVS: It is less uncertain. There is no way to be absolutely certain.
And also, just quickly, I know we've got to go, but ultimately, the big picture here is long-term question, because we are going to pay interest on $862 billion. The question for me whether it's successful will be, does the short-term gain outweigh the long-term negative of paying debt for a long time on another trillion dollars?
Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. That we really don't know.
VELSHI: Right. OK. Thanks very much for that, Josh.
LEVS: You got it.
VELSHI: Josh keeping track of the stimulus, as he always does for us.
OK. It's a new hour and we've got a new "Rundown." Let me tell you what we've got lined up for this hour.
We've got a whole lot of hope and a whole lot of concern about what's going on in the housing market.
Where should I be, right over here?
Well, let me bring you up to speed with what we have got on the new hour right now.
We are going to talk you a bit about New Orleans, what is going on in New Orleans. We'll go to Tom Foreman, who is live there with an update on what's happening five years after Hurricane Katrina.
Another recall that we've been telling you about. Not just eggs now. Deli meats are being recalled, and we'll tell you about that.
Plus, Race to the Top round two. We'll tell you which states have won some highly-coveted education money and what they did to get it.
Texting an kids. Every time you hear those words together, it can't be good, right? I'll show you a school that proves it actually can be good.
But our top story right now is what's going on with stem-cell research.
You've probably heard this already, but a federal judge -- a U.S. district court judge -- last night struck down the federal government's authority to finance stem-cell research using embryos. Now, this is a controversial issue, as you probably know.
The issue here is embryonic stem cells. These are stem cells that come from embryos, many of which are left over from fertility clinics, but many of which some people think represent born lives. And as Jeff Toobin will tell us in a minute, that's part of the controversy.
The ability to study stem-cell embryos allows us to understand some sicknesses and diseases that we otherwise don't have cures for. But at this point, much of that research across the country has ground to a halt.
Let me give you a little bit of background before I go to Jeff Toobin to talk about this.
In 1996, Congress enacts what is called a Dickey Wicker Amendment which bars federal funding for research that creates or destroys human embryos. That gets tacked on to the Health and Human Services spending bill every year.
Now, in 2001, President Bush, he allowed federal funding of embryonic stem cells for stem cells that had already been established before this 1996 law. So there were 21 stem-cell lines that President Bush said could get federal funding.
In March of 2009, President Obama then allowed federal funding for research into stem cells that were donated, that were from donated embryos. And that expanded it from 21 to, by some estimate, several hundred.
Well, this ruling came in last night which is going to stop all of that research.
Let's go to Jeff Toobin, our senior legal analyst -- he's in New York right now -- for a bit more of a description as to what this is all about.
Jeff, what happened when this judge made his ruling last night?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: Well, what happened was that the federal funding of stem-cell research has stopped. The question is, does it stop even the ongoing federal research with stem cells, or is it just the stem-cell research that's going to -- that had been planning to start? That's what's left ambiguous by this order, but what's not ambiguous is that looking forward, if this ruling stands, there will be no more federal funds for stem-cell research.
VELSHI: All right. As we've discussed, this is very, very controversial. It has been for a long time.
What changed? Why did this judge see a change from what has been the status quo for a sometime, for a year?
TOOBIN: Well, what changed, at least to Judge Royce Lamberth, was how President Obama's executive order which he issued in March of 2009 was affected by a law that Congress passed way back in 1996.
Now, a president cannot overrule an act of Congress. An act of Congress signed by the president, Bill Clinton in those days, and it has subsequently been reaffirmed, can never be overturned by a president acting unilaterally.
What Judge Lamberth said was the order that President Obama signed last March conflicted with the law. And when there's a conflict between the law and the act of a president acting alone, the president's actions has to be overturned.
VELSHI: All right. We're going to talk more about this shortly.
Jeff Toobin is our senior legal analyst joining us from New York.
All right. We are going to carry on this discussion, but first we're going to talking about Shirley Sherrod.
They forced her out. It was a knee-jerk reaction to a manufactured racial controversial. Then they apologized and asked her back.
Today, the Shirley Sherrod saga seemed to draw to a close when she politely declined a high-profile position at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
She talked to Tony Harris shortly after, and that brings us this hour's "Sound Effect."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Are you angry, bitter, ticked off?
SHIRLEY SHERROD, FMR. GEORGIA DIRECTOR, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, USDA: You know, I can't even get angry. I wish I was an individual who could get angry and stay angry for a while. I guess if I could, you probably would have seen a different Shirley Sherrod throughout this. But I can't be angry.
If you're angry, you can't think straight. You can't move forward. You're stuck at a point.
I'm at the point where I feel we need to move on. Let's get out there and make some of the good changes we need to make in this country. We can't do it if we're angry.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: Sherrod did say that she looked forward to some type of future relationship with the USDA. Secretary Tom Vilsack has asked her to consult with the agency on discrimination issues.
Now, when it comes to embryonic stem cells, which we were just talking about, you can talk about the science or you can talk about the politics. Guess which one is more complicated? We just touched on a bombshell court ruling. After the break, we're going to talk -- let's call it political science -- with Jeff Toobin.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Jeff Toobin, our senior legal analyst, joins us again to continue this conversation about the ban on embryonic stem-cell research.
We're calling it political science, Jeff, because there's a science component to this and there's a politics component to this.
Here's my question -- in 1996, Congress made it clear they didn't want funding of embryonic stem-cell destruction leading to research. President Bush, under pressure from the scientific community -- they said we really need this stuff -- made an exception for embryonic stem-cell lines that had been established before this law went into place. President Obama really stretched the definition of that in 2009, clearly knowing that the law was not on their side.
Shouldn't the law be changed, as opposed to executive orders coming from the president?
TOOBIN: Well, I think the Obama administration could change the law if it wanted, but it seems pretty clear to me that they don't have the votes in Congress to change the law.
This is very much like the end of the health care debate earlier this year, which you may remember, where abortion politics came to trump something that didn't really have a lot to do, at least directly, with abortion. Stem-cell research, embryonic stem-cell research, is a proxy, is a symbol, is a representation of abortion politics because pro-lifers, anti-abortion people, believe that these embryos are human lives, even though they're just a group of cells. And to destroy them is to destroy human life.
That view, I think, has enough votes in Congress to stop a change of this law. And that's why the president, President Bush first, and now President Obama, had to write these executive orders around this 1996 law. President Bush did it successfully. We'll see whether President Obama's will be seen ultimately as successful. This one judge has said it conflicts with the law.
VELSHI: Let me ask you this -- and it's entirely likely that this ends up at the Supreme Court. Unlike the abortion debate, where there's sort of for and against and there's different flavors of for and against, there's a third constituency here, and that is the scientific research community for whom embryonic stem-cell research is the holy grail.
Do they have standing in an argument like this?
TOOBIN: Well, the Supreme Court would certainly listen, and there will certainly be amicus briefs, which means Friends of the Court briefs. Scientists will present briefs to the Supreme Court saying this is very important, this will save lives, we need this kind of research. But the Supreme Court is as polarized about this issue as the rest of the country.
And I would not at all be surprised to see the Supreme Court split 5-4 on this kind of case, with Anthony Kennedy, the swing justice, right in the middle. And whether -- this is not an issue of constitutional law, this is simply an evaluation of whether President Obama's new policy conflicts with this law. But it is certainly very much wrapped up with abortion politics, and I would not be at all surprised to see the Supreme Court split on it the way the Supreme Court usually splits on abortion, which is, in the current makeup, 5- 4.
VELSHI: In your opinion though -- you've highlighted that it is a proxy for abortion. But clearly, things have been done with respect to stem-cell research, and exceptions have been made like in the case of 2001, when President Bush made an exception, exceptions are made here for certain reasons. So it's sort of abortion-light in some ways?
TOOBIN: Well, it is to some people. But whatever else you think about the anti-abortion forces in this country, they are very principled.
They care deeply about this issue. They are not interested in exceptions. They don't care if the -- if some people think the ends justify the means.
They think that taking an embryo that could conceivably become a human being is the taking of a human life. And they are not interested in compromise.
Now, it may be that members of Congress may be interested in a compromise, but you're not going to see the anti-abortion forces in this country say, well, because of the importance of the medical research, we're going to give way on this issue. They've had many chances to do that. They haven't done it. And they will fight this to the end.
VELSHI: All right. Jeff, thanks very much for joining us.
Jeff Toobin is our senior legal analyst joining us from New York.
This issue will continue, and we will continue to cover it.
Worry in New Orleans. Stronger levees are being built, but are they strong enough to fend off another hurricane? We'll talk about it when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: The New Orleans levees brought down by Hurricane Katrina are being rebuilt. They're already stronger than they were before, but locals are wondering if they're strong enough.
CNN's Tom Foreman is on the CNN Express. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): All around New Orleans, the federal government's latest promise to keep this city safe from the next big storm is rising.
COL. ROBERT SIONKLER, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: Yes. We're doing about 15 to 20 years of construction work in about 36 months.
FOREMAN: Colonel Robert Sionkler of the Army Corps of Engineers is supervising construction of this two-mile-long storm surge barrier across one major waterway and improvements to pumping stations hundreds of miles of levees and flood walls, all of which he admits were never what they should have been.
(on camera): The walls you are building out here are just fundamentally much, much stronger.
SINKLER: Oh, no doubt about it. In every way, they're much stronger and more robust.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Public safety is the top priority of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
FOREMAN (voice-over): In promotional videos by the Corps, the improvements are billed as technological marvels anchored by pilings driven deep into the earth, reinforced with clay, rock and concrete, a series of defenses working with natural barriers such as marshlands to dull the teeth of even the most fierce storm.
Vic Zillmer is the engineer in charge.
(on camera): If this system were completed and had been in place when Katrina hit, would we have seen the results we did?
VIC ZILLMER, RESIDENT ENGINEER: Absolutely not. It would have been very, very different.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a lot of denial from the Corps of Engineers.
FOREMAN (voice-over): But some locals and other experts have their doubts and their own movie.
A new documentary, "The Big Uneasy," suggesting the Corps bears much blame for not building better levees long ago.
Actor Harry Shearer directed the film.
(on camera): Look, their project looks very big and very impressive.
HARRY SHEARER, ACTOR: Yes, it does.
FOREMAN: But you don't have much faith in it? SHEARER: If you place the reassurances, the reassurance statement that the Corps is issuing today against the reassuring statements that the Corps issued before Katrina, they track totally. They have been giving us these reassurances before.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Shearer and others want to see more commitment to restoring those protected wetlands, more attention to possible weaknesses in the Corps plan. With the project scheduled for completion by next summer, the Corps can only offer promises.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, as far as design goes, it's the best humans can do at this time.
FOREMAN: And hope that next time their plans for stopping the big one will work.
Tom Foreman, CNN, New Orleans.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VELSHI: All right.
This Thursday, CNN's Anderson Cooper returns to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. See what he found "In Katrina's Wake," a "Building up America" and "AC 360" special this Thursday night, 10:00 Eastern.
All right. The famous landmark known as the Gateway to the West is rusting, and no one seems to know just how much. We're going to go "Off the Radar" right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Hey. I want to bring you some pictures here. Take a look at this.
This is a sperm whale. These pictures are coming to us courtesy of WPLG, WFOR, Miami.
The Miami Beach Marina is where this is. A nine-foot sperm whale, it's injured under one of the docks. Now, it's swimming under its own power, but specialists are trying to figure out what to do about this.
Chad's with me right now. We're being told that the U.S. Coast Guard has said that this whale was hit by a boat perhaps.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Possibly. I mean, these guys, you get up there on the top of the water, and it's a very busy little area out there.
The funny part is that this is kind of in an area which would certainly be no wake. So this whale would have had to either get hit by a faster boat far out to sea, and swim in here, but someone wasn't observing the no-wake zone. Because, clearly, if someone is doing two, three knots, that whale should have been able to get out of the way. VELSHI: Get out of the way. All right. We'll keep an eye on that.
MYERS: Let's just hope he's just there. I don't know that they know he's injured.
(CROSSTALK)
VELSHI: Right. He could just be hanging out.
MYERS: Hanging out.
VELSHI: Have you ever been up to the arches in St. Louis?
MYERS: I have been. I've been to both arches, the McDonald's arches and the steel ones.
VELSHI: And the steel arches.
What's going on with these?
MYERS: Well, they're kind of --
VELSHI: They're stainless steel. Why are they rusting?
MYERS: Well, because you can't build it out of stainless steel. Underneath, there's metal.
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: Yes. And up here, they're seeing little runs of corrosion. So, although it's a quarter inch of stainless on the outside, there's a three-eighths inch plate below it that they believe may be rusted.
And the reason why we've gone "Off the Radar" with this, the reason I thought this was interesting, the History Channel has a show that's called Earth after People, or Earth After Humans, or whatever it is. And they will show you what New York City will look like 100 years after people stop living there or 500 years after -- and everything starts to tumble and corrode, and the windows are knocked out, and the vines have grown up the Empire State Building.
And so, I thought, wow, something you would think would be completely enduring, stainless steel, how could this possibly go anywhere? This could be in one of those episodes.
VELSHI: What's the issue? Is there moisture getting into -- I mean, you can go inside. People go inside. What's --
MYERS: Have you been inside?
VELSHI: I haven't been. I've been by it a few times.
MYERS: It's about 54 feet across. These are isosceles triangles. This arch is not a square, it's actually a triangle, the top being flat, and then the angle coming in like this down at the bottom here.
And you go up, and you kind of rock and roll all the way up here. It's a little unnerving. It takes four minutes to go up to the top, and then there's a little area up there that you can go out and look out. And that's it. And you get to stay there for a couple of minutes and you go back down.
But it's a great trip. It's an absolutely fantastic trip.
Did you know this was a competition? Someone won a competition there in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in the '40s. They said, hey, let's make some great things, and this engineering firm designed this and built it in St. Louis.
I thought when they were building it -- I'm old enough to remember when they started -- or at least when they finished. I thought it was going over the Mississippi River.
VELSHI: No, it's on one side.
MYERS: It's only on the one side. So when I got to St. Louis, I went, hey, I thought that was supposed to be all the way over in Illinois.
VELSHI: It's still a nice scene, though, the river there and --
MYERS: It's amazing.
VELSHI: It's a pretty city.
MYERS: Yes.
They don't know how bad it's corroded. It may literally just be a buff job where they can come in and they buff it out.
The good news is, they get inside all of the time. They will look inside and then they will eventually figure out if it's really metal that's getting in the way or is just the outside possibly here.
(WEATHER REPORT)
VELSHI: All right. Trapped -- listen, this is an issue. These miners in Chile, 2,500 feet underground, half a mile underground, 95 degrees, very little food or water. That's what 33 miners in Chile are possibly facing more months to come.
I'm going to tell you more about the story -- it has me fascinated -- after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Time now for "Globe Trekking." Let's go first to Somalia.
Armed men wearing military uniforms stormed a hotel in Mogadishu today and opened fire, killing at least 33 people. Six of them were members of Parliament. The attack is believed to be part of a bigger offense launched yesterday by Somali insurgents.
Dozens of people have been killed in the past few days. CNN's David McKenzie joins us from Nairobi, Kenya. David, bring us up to speed on what is going on in Mogadishu.
DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Ali, a great deal of violence is going on in Mogadishu. There have been two days of insurgency activity. Al Shabab (ph), an al Qaeda-linked group is trying to overthrow the government there has been attacking African union forces, attacking government troops. And also staging this brazen attack in daylight at a hotel that was popular with government officials. Six MPs killed in what was a combined gun-and-suicide attack. And certainly a very high death toll. Over 30 people killed in that attack in Mogadishu. Ali.
VELSHI: Let's just talk about this. Six of those people were members of Parliament who were killed. What kind of functioning government does Somalia actually have right now?
MCKENZIE: Ali, it's a very weak functioning government. The transitional federal government came in a few years ago. It's tries to maintain power, but really they only hold on to a couple of installations within the capital of Mogadishu. And those installations only survive, really, because of an African Union peacekeeping force there.
And Al Shabab is really controlling a large part of the southern part of the country. Security analysts and foreign government is very worried because Al Shabab basically has become a harbor for international terrorist groups, including people coming as far up field even as from the U.S. (INAUDIBLE). And they have more of a pan- regional terror aim than just trying to take over the country.
In July, they attacked people watching the World Cup finals in Kampala. So, certainly, they're showing they can operate outside of Somalia. And it's a group we should definitely watch closely.
VELSHI: And they said that was in retaliation for the fact that the Ugandans had been supporting the anti-insurgent efforts there. It's a complicated story. But you highlight properly that it is more than just an isolated story. It's got regional impact.
David McKenzie in Nairobi, thanks very much for that.
Let me take you over to northern Chile right now where these miners have been trapped underground. I have to show you this. This is quite remarkable. These 33 miners are trapped more than 2,500 feet underground. Ninety-five degree heat, surviving in a hole about the size of a small living room. They haven't given up yet.
Let me just give you a bit of a story here about what happened. Mark, let's take a look at this graphic. You see the wiggly line on your left. That's the passage, that's the way the miners got down there. On August 5th, there was a collapse. And you see they were trapped where the bunch of rocks is. They tried to rescue them, but the mine was unstable. They couldn't do that. So, the rescuers went back up. But there's this thin bore hole going down. You can see that - it's not the one on the extreme right, it's the one next to it going down. And that gets down into this area that is the size of a small apartment where these 33 miners are. They want to build a bigger hole over to the right of that where they can lower something that is big enough to collect a person - a basket, maybe -- and actually bring the miners back up there. But that hole could take months to actually get to. So, let's get a little more of the story.
Karl Penhaul is at the scene right now with the latest. Karl, what have we got?
KARL PENHAUL, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, again, I've just been talking to the Chilean health minister, and he's really overseeing all the operations to make sure these 33 miners stay both physically and mentally healthy for the coming weeks and months until they can be brought back to the surface.
And so, for now what they have to work with is a bore hole. And it's a bore hole about 4 or 5 inches in diameter that allows them to send liquid nutrients, liquid food down that bore hole. And the minister was telling me they've also called on help from NASA and also from submarine experts from the Chilean navy to help them and give them advice and tips on how to maintain men healthy in enclosed spaces.
But yesterday in fact was the first time that they established a voice-to-voice communication with these men. They dropped a microphone down that hole. And the mine -- health minister was just laughing with me. He said "The first thing I did when I dropped that microphone down there," he said the 33 men all asked me to send down a can of beer. The second thing they did was then to break out into a rendition of the Chilean national anthem.
And he says what that shows him is these men are in fine spirits. They're in fighting spirits. They are determined to stay alive. But he does say quite poignantly that so far, he hasn't had the heart to tell them that it could take three to four months to drill a hole big enough to get them out. He says if he tells them now, it is going to be a big psychological blow to them.
So he said softy, softy. He's got to build them up. He's got to give them a little routine, a work routine, an exercise routine and make sure they're all physically healthy. And then in the coming days, he will explain exactly how he plans to get them out, Ali.
VELSHI: Brilliant idea to talk to NASA and to submarine experts for dealing with being in a small, enclosed closed space for a long time.
Karl, we will of course stay on top of the story. What a fascinating story. Karl Penhaul in Chile regarding this mine.
OK. Race to the Top. We've talked about it a lot about this show. It's the federal government program that recognizes the nation's top schools. They announced a new round of winners today, meaning ten states just got a whole lot of money to help with public education. We'll tell you who won it, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: In "Chalk Talk" today, education secretary Arne Duncan just announced the winners in round two of the Race to the Top competition. This is the contest, you'll recall, where states compete to get a portion of federal education grant money.
This time around, $4.3 billion are up for grabs. The winners are D.C., Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island. These ten states are among 19 finalists in the second round of the Race to the Top program. In order to win this money, each state had to send a representative to Washington to give a presentation. They also had to answer questions about how they would use the money to improve education in their states.
The Race to the Top program awards grant money based on plans that address four areas. One, preparing students to succeed. Two, measures student's growth and improve instruction. Three, recruiting and rewarding quality teachers and principals. And four, turn around low-performing schools.
Delaware and Tennessee won grants in the first round of the Race to the Top competition. Duncan says he's hopeful there will be enough federal funds available to have a round three of the Race to the Top competition next year.
OK. Kids and texting. Some people think it's a teacher's worst nightmare. Except for one school; they're actually using it as a learning tool. CNN's Deborah Feyerick explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Seventh-grader Cayleb Coyne has texting in class down to a science.
CAYLEB COYNE, 7TH GRADE STUDENT: Open it up. Put the phone in there and act like I'm looking for something, and send a text message.
FEYERICK: Hallways are also good.
COYNE: It's hard to get caught in the hallways than it is in class.
FEYERICK (on camera): Because you are moving, like a shark, always moving.
(voice-over): Coyne says his cell phone has been confiscated six times in six months and he is not the only one despite constant reminders from his principal at Hawart Straw Middle School.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your cell phones are supposed to be where? Yes. In your locker. Not in class.
FEYERICK: But class is exactly where they end up. According to the pew research center, even in schools that ban cell phone use nearly 60 percent of all students admit texting during class. A growing problem in schools across the country.
ROBIN NOVELLI, PRINCIPAL, BAYSIDE HIGH SCHOOL: Well why are you so addicted to this technology?
FEYERICK: At Bayside High School in Florida, students risk being suspended if their phone is confiscated more than once. So for this year 200 kids had their phones taken away.
NOVELLI: Students need to be fully 100 percent authentically engaged in the classroom and pulling out a cell phone and texting to a friends about whatever it is they might be talking about is not the learning environment that I as a principle want to promote.
FEYERICK: And despite that zero tolerance policy --
NOVELLI: We still daily collect cell phones from students that have them out when they are supposed to be learning in the classroom.
DR. MICHAEL RICH, DIRECTOR, CENTER ON MEDIA AND CHILD HEALTH: I don't think we are going to stop the tsunami.
FEYERICK: But pediatrician and media expert Michael Rich says the reality is kids use more than seven hours of media a day. Depriving them of it could backfire.
RICH: Pandora's box is open here. The technologies are here. What we need to do is take control of them instead of letting them control us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can't put the genie back in the bottle. The cell phones are here.
FEYERICK: At Havart Straw Middle School --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right guys -- again please.
FEYERICK: Teachers like Ronald Royster have decided if you can't beat them, join them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is not really a phone. It is their computer for class.
FEYERICK: The school handed out 75 cell phones to fifth graders as part of a unique pilot program.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Click on Ellis Island.
FEYERICK: Texting and calling features are disabled and internet sites are filtered. Phones are used for things like note taking and research. For 11-year-olds, Kiara and Niya learning is different now.
(on camera): When did you make a movie during home run?
RYAN GUZINSKI: No. This was actually in math. It was about decimals. You can sync it. Which means the teachers will get it and they can grade you on it.
FEYERICK: So it really is helping reinforce the lessons?
GUZINSKI: Yes. Because we are like memorizing things so much easier on here.
NAYA RIVERA, 5TH GRADE STUDENT: It is like you want to look at the screen. It's almost like a mini TV where you are like, you want to look at it, you don't want to go look at a piece of paper.
FEYERICK (voice-over): The district superintendant says that dollar for dollar, buying phones is more be efficient than new computers.
FEYERICK (on camera): There are some educators who just say these should not be in school. What's your response to that?
ILEANA ECKERT, HAVERSTRAW STONY POINT CENTRAL SCHOOL DISTRICT: I think we are in the middle of a new revolution. It is part of who they are today. And why not use something in a positive way that they are bringing with them?
FEYERICK: As for these fifth graders --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I started texting less when I had it.
RIVERA: Now that I have this, it is more fun to go on the Internet on this and experiment with it instead of texting all day, like doing nothing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is like bye, phone.
FEYERICK (on camera): The kids we spoke with say their grades went up last year because of the mobile devices. The superintendent says for the cost of a single computer locked away in a lab, she could hand out mobile devices to an entire class, so kids of all income levels would have access to the latest technology and guidance on how to use it best.
Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VELSHI: And you know we talk a lot about education on this show. All next week, we're focusing on education. It's a special series called "FIX OUR SCHOOLS." The key thing here is will it be focused -- it's going to be focused on success. You don't want to miss it, right here, all week next week on CNN.
And yes, it's costing us big buck, but the White House says we're seeing big technology gains from stimulus money that was earmarked for innovation. Well, we're going to take a good, hard look at that claim when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: I'm here with Josh. Josh and I have spent a lot of time studying the Recovery Act, the stimulus bill. And lately, there's been a lot of discussion as to how much good this bill has done for the economy. So, President -- Vice President Biden was out there today touting one particular part of it, worth $100 billion and saying what it's done.
JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. And the background is, of course, President Obama facing a lot of criticism, even these days. The poll numbers showing a lot of people really dissatisfied with his handling of the economy. So, you got the White House doing more and more events, saying, hey, look at the great stuff we've gotten done.
So, now Vice President Biden talking about what's been done for energy. And they released this report saying $100 billion out of the $862 billion is going to innovation. Things like electric cars, things like solar power. I think we have some video.
I'm going you tell you some of the numbers they're putting out today about what's been happening with some of this stimulus money. They're saying that the U.S. is on track to cut the cost of solar power by 50 percent - oh, look at that. That's me driving an electric car last summer. A little Anvil one.
They're saying the cost of electric vehicle batteries is going to drop seven percent by 2015. They're saying total U.S. capacity to generate renewable energy will double by 2010. So, what they're doing is pushing these kinds of things, saying, hey, America is saying we need cleaner energy. America is saying we need innovation to compete with other nations --
VELSHI: And this may be the driver of the economy for the next 15 years. I mean, nobody can come up with a more obvious driver. It's not going to be the credit system or banks or other things. It may be this.
And I will give this administration credit. It is such a dramatic increase over the last administration's commitment to alternative energy. Fine. Let's put that as a check mark in their column.
Now, let's go back to the criticism being leveled against this administration. Did the stimulus bill create lots of jobs?
(LAUGHTER)
LEVS: Well, here's the question. How do you define that? Let's take a look at what Vice President Biden said today.
VELSHI: OK.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nobody anymore argues whether or not there would be three million fewer people working today than there are now working but for the Recovery Act. No serious economist is making that argument any longer. The economy has been growing for a full year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: Give Vice President Biden credit for the gusto with which he says "No serious economist disputes that." Because it seems a lot of serious economists --
LEVS: Yes. I mean, if I went through (INAUDIBLE) mode right now, I would be saying, technically that is false. Because there are plenty of serious economists who say that.
VELSHI: At least, they say in the inverse. They say there's a range of jobs that were created --
LEVS: Look, the White House's own Council of Economic Advisors, which as a rule has had the rosiest picture of what the stimulus is doing - they say it's somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 million. So, they are saying that lots of people are working because of the stimulus, which is clearly true.
The CBO, Congressional Budget Office, totally nonpartisan. They say somewhere between 1.2 million and 2.8 million. I know you like these pictures. Let me show you.
VELSHI: Yes. By the way, I would say that if he had said "No serious economist disputes the fact that jobs have been created by stimulus," that would be fair.
LEVS: Yes. Of course.
VELSHI: Everybody thinks jobs have been --
LEVS: If you borrow billions of dollars you don't have and you pay people to build roads, then people have jobs. It's a fact. The question is, long term, what are we paying for all that debt?
So, when we look at jobs in the recovery, here's how they put it all together. All right?
VELSHI: This is important. This is the map -- when they talk 3 million or 2.2 million or whatever it is, this is how they come up with the numbers.
LEVS: This is how they come up with the numbers. They have analysis and they say, OK, first of all, direct jobs. How many jobs are directly funded by the stimulus? And they look at that number --
VELSHI: That means this guy, his contractor, his boss, is somehow being paid from a stimulus project. Money being -- goes from the government to him. LEVS: Stimulus money paid for this project with our imaginary scenario here. It paid for this project. That's how he is able to be paid to do this work. OK?
Then he had to buy -- the construction company had to buy the tools. They had to buy the cement. They had to buy the hammers. So, the people who sell the hammers are making money. So, that's an indirect job. Then, the people who sell the hammers and the construction workers have money to go to the grocery store -
VELSHI: You got to eat.
LEVS: -- and they go to the grocery store. And those are induced jobs. So, what they do is do these analysis where they try to come up with their best guesstimate of what all these things are combined, and they say, okay. It's this many millions of people who wouldn't be working otherwise.
The problem is, there's really -- and they even admit this, the White House Council of Economic Advisers -- they say, you really can't know what might have happened if the money were used differently. You know --
VELSHI: That's the issue.
(CROSSTALK)
VELSHI: We don't know what would have happened otherwise.
LEVS: We don't know what would have happened if you listed out, if people hadn't been buying these bonds but instead were spending money -- that money in the economy where it would have gone. There are so many variables, we can't be sure --
VELSHI: Well, I think this business of direct jobs, indirect jobs and induced job, whatever the variables are in there, that's a sound way of looking at jobs created. The issue is, you just don't want what variable to put in. We know exactly how many direct jobs, this is the part we're certain about, right?
LEVS: Yes, exactly. Yes, we can even set up this little slide show here.
So yes, the direct jobs is a little bit easier to be certain. You're never going to know totally certainly, but yes.
VELSHI: But they know how much money they paid out and that's what you and I would be making those phone calls and saying, you got this much money, did you hire somebody.
LEVS: Yes, so we're not suggesting that there's anything wrong with them combining the three kinds of jobs. What we're saying is it's so general and it's so hard --
VELSHI: It's just hard to get your head around. LEVS: What we still don't know is for all the years in front of us -- the stimulus is $862 billion, we have to pay interest on all of it. We're adding another trillion dollars to our debt. So what does that do to us long term? Does the short-term benefit of what's come out of the stimulus, which is clearly there, ultimately outweigh the long-term negative of having more debt?
VELSHI: And we're not -- you and I are not economists, but we studied it a long time and I think you and I come to the same conclusion that we can't -- we don't know.
LEVS: And all the smart economists out there disagree with each other.
VELSHI: I do get frustrated by people who claim they can look at the same data that you and I have spent months on and tell me the answer is obvious. It's anything but obvious.
LEVS: It's not obvious.
VELSHI: All right, good work. Thanks very much.
If you think this whole embryonic stem cell thing that we've been talking about is a sticky wicket, you are not far off. After the break, I'm going to show you what I mean in "Wordplay."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Time now for "Wordplay" or maybe just for today, "Nameplay."
Dickey-Wicker -- it's the law of the land, a provision named for this Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and former Republican Congressman Jay Dickey of Arkansas. It bans the use of taxpayer dollars for the creation or destruction of human embryos for scientific research. It been renewed almost routinely every year since it was first enacted in 1996.
We bring it up today, obviously, because of a bombshell court ruling that strikes down, at least for now, an attempt by President Obama to fund research on embryonic stem cells while staying within the letter of the law.
As you may know, embryonic stem cells are seen by many as potential cures for all manner of terrible diseases from diabetes to Parkinson's to cancer. But lawmakers Dickey and Wicker and many other people see human embryos as human life plain and simple, not to be tinkered or tampered with, even for a good cause.
The court fight is just getting started, but unlike the ethical or political debate, it will one day be resolved.
A web posting by a Tea Party group in Maine is sparking all kinds of action on social media sites, stirring up some anger in me, too. I'll talk about it my "XYZ."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Time now for "The XYZ of It."
Forty-seven years ago this week, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic "I have a dream" speech. Forty-seven years later, we've apparently taken a bit of a step backwards thanks to a so-called "Guide to Washington" posted on the website of the Maine Refounders, a Tea Party-affiliated group.
Tea Partiers plan to converge on D.C. this Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial for a rally dubbed "Restoring Honor" and the web guide has sparked Twitter buzz and plenty of outrage across the nation's capital. It's easy to see why. Basically, this "guide" tells ralliers to say in the safe parts of the city. The areas it says to avoid, based on train lines and streets, are mostly African- American and low-income neighborhoods. It also suggests African immigrants to the city are touchy about their heritage and goes on to say most taxi drivers and waiters in the city seem to be east African or Arab.
Now come on. I'm all for Tea Partiers or anyone else having the right to rally as they please, especially in the nation's capital, but web postings like this are not helping anybody's cause. A political party is meant to reach out to people, include people, bring in diverse members, not herd people into categories or paint them as safe or unsafe.
This Saturday's rally takes place 47 years to the day after Dr. King proclaimed his dream and it takes place at the memorial dedicated to Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. Dr. King said people should be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin or their ethnicity or where they live. Well, if the ralliers truly want to restore honor, they've got to first promote tolerance, equality and love of their fellow man.
That's my "XYZ." Time for Rick and "RICK'S LIST."
