Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

Miers Battle; Risk of Bird Flu Pandemic High

Aired October 12, 2005 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Martha Stewart, you must know by now that she's back and she's very busy. Plenty of projects on her designer plate. The new daytime show, firing potential apprentices and pushing a new book. She told CNN's Larry King last night that her five months in the system was time not wasted.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARTHA STEWART, ENTREPRENEUR: It wasn't as horrible as anticipated. You know, it is a total lack of freedom, a lack of, of being able to go where you want to go do what you want to do. You are incarcerated. It is a very serious thing. I took it seriously. I served my time with dignity, I hope. I met many, many people there that I actually have great compassion for, and I don't regret my decision in any way.

I don't think I'm changed. I did find out, or at least I realized, a lot of things about myself while I was there, that I'm a strong woman, that I'm a very healthy woman, thank heavens, that I can put up with a lot, that I can be patient, that I can make friends in all places, that I can teach, that people still want to get information from me and inspiration, that I am able to survive very, very bad things and still come home, thrive and see a bright future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Up next on LIVE FROM, the headlines, including information on a suspect connected to a stolen plane in Georgia.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWS BREAK)

WHITFIELD: If President Bush hoped his second nominee to the Supreme Court would be a shoo-in, well, he certainly was mistaken. Mainly conservatives have blasted the president's choice of Harriet Miers to the bench. One the biggest complaints, that Miers' opinions on hot-button constitutional issues are virtually unknown. One person who can provide us with some insight on Harriet Miers is John Council. He is a senior reporter for a Texas lawyer newspaper, which focuses on the legal profession.

Good to see you, John.

JOHN COUNCIL: Good to see you.

WHITFIELD: Well, in your reporting, did you learn through your sources that perhaps the White House thought Miers would be a shoo-in, simply by virtue of the fact that he picked her and that other conservatives would be on the bandwagon and endorse her?

COUNCIL: You know, I think that the White House was taken aback by the reaction from conservatives about Harriet Miers. However, the lawyers that know her like her. They trust her. They respect her. And I've been talking to lawyers this week who are kind of insulted by the fact that she's being attacked the way she is.

WHITFIELD: Well, other lawyers like her, a number of people on the hill have said she doesn't have a judicial record so they don't know how she would vote on certain given issues. But we also know that John Roberts made it very clear -- and he even counseled other justices -- that they don't want to reveal that kind of personal opinion because, as lawyers, you don't want to allow people to know how you feel on certain topics, so that they would be biased...

COUNCIL: Exactly.

WHITFIELD: Is there a double standard here?

COUNCIL: Well, I think some of the lawyers -- one I talked to yesterday, who happens to be female and very respected, thinks that this criticism is wavering very close to sexism, because there were a lot of the same questions hanging over John Roberts' heads that are hanging over Harriet Miers. And she's being attacked a lot more vigorously than Roberts ever was, especially from the right wing and conservative groups.

WHITFIELD: And how much of the fact that her gender may be also what has precipitated this criticism of letters or notes, very fond words that she used, describing now President Bush, then Texas governor at the time, and apparently, people are saying, wait a minute, is this appropriate? Is it appropriate to criticize that kind of dialogue between friends?

COUNCIL: Well, I mean, the bottom line is that Harriet Miers is someone that the president trusts. And there is some precedent for President Bush, at least when he was a governor of Texas, appointing someone who's had no judicial experience to a high bench. He did it with Al Gonzales when he appointed him to the Texas Supreme Court in the late '90s, and there really wasn't any criticism when he did that back then. And the lawyers who watched Al Gonzales thought he performed very well. He was sort of a moderate to conservative justice, and the lawyers really liked the opinions that he wrote.

And I think that they have the same expectation of Harriet Miers, that she'll be sort of a moderate to conservative justice and listen to both sides of an issue and won't prejudge things before they get to the court.

WHITFIELD: Are you finding from your reporting that people are also being rather judgmental about her educational background, not just her judicial pedigree, but that she went to SMU and not an Ivy League like a number of other President Bush's, you know, close confidantes, and friends and appointees, who mostly came from Yale? (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: In our "Security Watch" today, more ominous warnings about bird flu. On a tour of Asia, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said the risk of a pandemic is very high. Person-to-person transmission of the virus is rare for now, but if there was an outbreak here at home, discovering it quickly could be crucial. So there is concern about a recent report.

CNN homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve has those details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An emergency room physician calls a public health department reporting a patient with symptoms of deadly botulism. He is told, I wouldn't worry too much if I were you. A caller to another health department describes bubonic plague. An employee there says, don't worry, go back to bed. The calls were part of a test. The results, sobering.

DR. NICOLE LURIE, RAND: We have a long way to go to train our public health work force to be a first line of defense.

MESERVE: Experts predict millions could die in an avian flu outbreak. But, as with other diseases, rapid detection could help curb its spread and lower the death toll. That is why local public health departments are supposed to be able to receive information about a wide range of serious illnesses 24/7. But Rand researchers discovered that some aren't even answering the phone.

In 2003, they made a series of calls to nineteen public health departments claiming to be doctors or nurses reporting urgent cases of illness. Three agencies were dropped from the test after failing to answer or return five consecutive calls. Many departments failed to respond in 30 minutes as mandated by the Centers for Disease Control. And some took more than 10 hours. Only two met all federal deadline guidelines.

DR GEORGES BENJAMIN, EXEC. DIR., AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH: That's not acceptable at all. Absolutely not. We now, in today's environment, we have to have 24-hour emergent contact in the public health system.

MESERVE: When the calls were answered, the quality of advice was sometimes poor. When researchers described small pox symptoms, none of the health departments suggested isolating the patient or using personal protective equipment, though the dangerous disease is highly contagious.

(on camera): Since September 11, an estimated $3 billion has been spent on public health. If the tests had been conducted before that spending, experts speculate the results might have been even worse. If they were conducted now, the results might be better.

Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: And you want to stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

Well, bird flu is just one concern on the minds of Americans. They're also speaking about many other issues.

Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport joins us now looking at the poll numbers. Frank, sources now say it was a hoax, but in the wake of last Thursday's warning of a possible threat to New York City's subways, where is the public's opinion on the issue of the nation's preparedness for a possible terrorist attack?

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GALLUP: Well, Betty, we've been looking at a lot of the data, and you cannot escape politics. I thought this was quite interesting as we reviewed what we found. To ask about federal homeland security efforts, Republicans overwhelmingly are positive, independents are in the middle, and look at Democrats -- 68 percent negative. So the way the Americans looks at the world colored by their underlying partisan orientation, perhaps, as much as by the reality of the situation.

Also, we asked this, and I think this is important. The New York scare, of course, brought home Americans' concerns that something relating to terror could happen in their local community. How prepared are local agencies to handle it, we asked Americans, in your community? Not a lot of optimism here. Just 12 percent said very prepared. Another 50 said somewhat prepared. So Americans, I think, are worried if something were to happen wherever they might live.

NYUGEN: OK. Shifting from terrorist attacks to natural disasters, the president's on his eighth visit -- or just wrapped it up -- from the Gulf coast to the hurricane-hit areas there. How is the public's opinion on his response?

NEWPORT: Well, not good. We looked at all the recent polling that we could find on Bush approval -- that is, job approval for the president -- handling Katrina, not Rita, which was higher in our polling. But Katrina, and across the board, is not good at all. Our latest poll, 40 percent. AP-Ipsos press (ph) poll, 26. "Newsweek" poll just released fairly recently, just 41 percent so in general, these low poll numbers for Katrina may help explain why once again the president was down in that region today, as you mentioned.

NGUYEN: OK, on a similar note, you know, gas prices are slowly -- very slowly -- starting to come down but how much do Americans blame the recent rise in those gas prices on the hurricane?

NEWPORT: Well, you cannot go wrong blaming the oil companies. We thought this was of interest. A lot of polling we've done here at Gallup shows no matter what happens, Americans say it is the oil companies that are at fault. So, we thought it was of interest to the look at this recently released poll by CBS News.

Three choices, the hurricane, the war in Iraq and the oil companies, blamed for the rising gas prices. It doesn't matter. Hurricanes, refineries out in the Gulf -- it doesn't matter. It's the oil companies themselves to get the blame from the American public. In fact, in a list of industries that we tested briefly, oil and gas companies were at the bottom in terms of Americans' positive evaluations.

NGUYEN: And you did mention Iraq. Tensions are high in Iraq as Saturday's referendum on the new constitution gets closer, so how does the public view the situation there now?

NEWPORT: Well, we were looking what Americans thought might happen going forward. We'll know more once, of course, once the vote on Saturday is in, and the news reports of that. But we looked at polling and said, all right, Americans, do you think there will be a Democratic condition in Iraq say within one year?

And there Americans are split even, not too bad. But in the long range we did find 55 percent to 43 percent of Americans saying, yes, Democracy will reign in the long run. So despite all the doom and gloom about Iraq and a lot of negative poll numbers, at least there is a ray of optimism from Americans. They think in the long run maybe, just maybe, Democracy will take hold in that country.

NGUYEN: Gallup editor-in-chief, Frank Newport. As always, thank you.

A missing plane mystery. A charter jet stolen from a Florida airport is found in another state. Our Tony Harris is on the story next on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: A government advisory panel is considering putting caps on some popular tax deductions. Susan Lisovicz has the story live from the New York Stock Exchange. With more on that -- Susan.

SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, a lot of interested parties on this one. The presidential tax advisory panel is close to recommending limits for popular tax breaks on home mortgages and on employer-provided health insurance. The bipartisan panel considering lowering the cap for mortgage deductions to around 300,000. Under the plan, any interest paid on mortgages above that limit would not be eligible for a tax deduction.

The panel has also discussed putting a cap of $11,000 a year per employee on the amount of premiums that employers could deduct. The panel trying to find revenue to offset changes that would pare back some of the alternative minimum tax, which is taking a big bite out of a growing number of upper middle-income families. The panel plans to make its final recommendations on November 1st. President Bush not obligated to accept them, but he appointed the panel in the first place -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: And so who would this impact the most?

LISOVICZ: Well, Fredricka, if a cap on mortgage rates is accepted, many upper middle-class families could feel the pinch, because the current deductions cap is $1 million. But in some areas like major cities, like the one you and I live in, medium home prices are well above $300,000, so it could end up hurting middle class families, as well. Overall, the panel says it wants to preserve incentives for lower and middle income workers, while cutting breaks for wealthier Americans.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Killer commute. This hour we take you for a ride on the world's most dangerous road.

Speeding defense. A lawyer for the policeman in this tape says they did nothing wrong. Hear what he had to say.

And financial forecast. The higher price you'll be paying this winter.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Fredricka Whitfield, in for Kyra Phillips. This hour of CNN's LIVE FROM begins right now.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com