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American Morning
Two Bachmann Campaign Managers Step Down; President Preparing to Give Jobs Speech; Libyan Convoy Spotted in Niger; IPhone 5 Prototype Lost in San Francisco Bar; Sixty Plus Wildfires Burning in Texas; Is Postal Service Obsolete?; Obama's Plan to Create Jobs; Texas Burning; Peace Deal in Bani Walid?; Petraeus Starts at CIA; Obama's Jobs Plan Preview; New Questions in Hacking Scandal; Postal Service Budget Woes Threaten Post Offices; Studies on 9/11 Dust Could Help First Responders; Fires, Tornadoes, Flooding Create Chaos Across the South
Aired September 06, 2011 - 06:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: September shake-up. Two of Michele Bachmann's top advisers stepping aside, leaving some to wonder this morning whether her run may be done?
Plus this --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Tough talk from the teamsters. Jimmy Hoffa saying that Tea Party has declared war on America's workers, and he's ready to lend an army of thousands to the president.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Iphone intrigue. A missing Apple prototype reportedly left behind in a bar traced behind to a home in San Francisco. This morning we're asking this, was it police or Apple employees who entered that home to search it?
VELSHI: Wow. And Lone Star inferno. More than 60 new fires, 60 new fires blazing through the state, some completely out of control. Governor Rick Perry is saying, this is the meanest fire his state has ever seen on this AMERICAN MORNING.
ROMANS: Good morning, everyone. It's Tuesday, September 6th. Welcome to AMERICAN MORNING.
VELSHI: You saw Rick Perry canceled plans to appear with other --
ROMANS: Republicans at that forum.
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: Because he was going back to the wildfires.
COSTELLO: He had to head back to the wildfires.
Let's start with hard core politics this morning, though. We begin with that major shakeup in the presidential campaign of Michele Bachmann. And it involves not one but two of her people. Her campaign manager Ed Rollins, a familiar face to CNN viewers, is stepping back into an advisory role citing health concerns. And her deputy campaign manager David Polyansky is leaving the campaign altogether.
Peter Hamby live in Columbia, South Carolina. What does this mean for Bachmann's campaign?
PETER HAMBY, CNN POLITICAL PRODUCER: Carol, Michele Bachmann is really entering a new phase of the campaign. A month ago she was the Republican frontrunner in Iowa, which is a central state to her presidential hopes. She won that Ames straw poll at the -- last month.
But now with Rick Perry entering the race he's really siphoned off a lot of her support in Iowa and South Carolina. So, you know, there have been reports of some tension within the campaign. This is the official explanation from Ed Rollins. He went on Anderson Cooper last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ED ROLLINS, FORMER BACHMANN CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I'm 64 years -- 68 years old. You know, I had a stroke a year and a half ago. And so, you know, I've worked 12, 14 hour days. It's wearing. I have great affection for Michele. I will do everything I can. It was always my plan to build a team, get to the straw poll -- obviously we won that -- and kind of make a transition a little bit to the fall when she's coming back to Congress. So that's in essence where we are today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAMBY: So that's the official line from the campaign. I can tell you that in hindsight this might not have been that surprising. Michele Bachmann has always been this grassroots outsider kind of an insurgent candidate whereas Ed Rollins is a salty campaign veteran. She's also cycled through numerous chiefs of staff during her time on the Hill, Carol. So Michele Bachmann really has a lot of changes to do in the coming months ahead to kind of recapture the momentum she had in the race one month ago.
COSTELLO: Peter, I know what the company line is, but when big- time people leave your campaign like this, this does not mean anything good for the campaign. I can't help but think of that. There was a FOX poll done recently where 10 percent of Tea Party supporters thought Michele Bachmann was too extreme to become president. I mean, is this the beginning of the end for her campaign? Is that what this means?
HAMBY: I would never say this is the beginning of the end, especially in this cycle which has had a number of changes week to week. I mean, the tempo of this election cycle is pretty much like nothing we've ever seen. I mean Tim Pawlenty was supposed to win Iowa back in the day and now he's not in the race. So I would never say that.
I do think Michele Bachmann does have some serious hurdles ahead. Rick Perry kind of appeals to establishment business-minded Republicans, along with Tea Party conservatives and social conservatives in a way that Michele Bachmann does not.
But she's not going to give up. You saw in this forum in South Carolina last night she really delivered a pretty strong performance, and expect her to keep doing that in the debate this week in California. One thing you can say about Michele Bachmann she's a total work horse. She's surprised a lot of people on the campaign trail this year, Carol.
COSTELLO: Peter Hamby reporting live from South Carolina, thanks.
ROMANS: All right, just days before his major jobs speech, President Obama is getting some strong support from teamster's president Jim Hoffa. Speaking at the president's Labor Day event in Detroit, Hoffa said there was a war on workers. And he had some fiery words for the Tea Party.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM HOFFA, PRESIDENT, TEAMSTERS UNION: When he sees what we're doing here, he will be inspired. But he needs help. And you know what, everybody here has a vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: The president was not at the rally when Hoffa made those comments. Let's bring in Dan Lothian live at the White House. Dan, is the administration saying anything about the sons of bitches comments from Hoffa?
DAN LOTHIAN, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No. So far the White House still no comment on those remarks. What the president, though, is commenting about and other White House aides is this big push to try and turn the jobs picture around, to lower that high unemployment rate. And so that's what the president plans to unveil in that speech to members of Congress on Thursday where aides say it will be a combination of ideas that we have heard about before publicly and some new ideas as well.
Also a combination of things that the president himself can do unilaterally and put in place right away and other things that will need Congressional approval. Some of the things that aides say that the president will be unveiling, for example, the extension of the unemployment benefits, the payroll tax cuts, also making sure that those trade deals get done. And what appears to be a key component, something that the president previewed in his remarks in Detroit yesterday, infrastructure jobs. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We've got roads and bridges across this country that need rebuilt. We've got private companies with the equipment and the manpower to do the building. We've got more than one million unemployed construction workers ready to get dirty right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LOTHIAN: And so this, of course, all comes at a time when the president has low approval ratings, when you those job numbers that came out, disappointing job numbers showing no jobs were created in the month of August.
So Republicans have been very critical of these efforts by the White House, saying that the administration has not been effective in putting any new policies out there to really make a dent in the struggling economy. And so that's the criticism that the White House is up against that the president makes those remarks.
Now, after those remarks, the president plans to hit the road. He'll head to Richmond, Virginia, on Friday, and a White House aide saying that the president will spend a decent amount of time on the road selling his plan.
ROMANS: Dan Lothian, thanks. You can see President Obama's speech to the joint session of Congress this Thursday at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.
VELSHI: Now to the battle for Tripoli. A large convoy of Libyan military vehicles has reportedly been spotted in northern Niger. Now Niger shares the southern border of Libya with Chad. Reportedly the military -- this convoy is reportedly being escorted by the Nigerian military. There are new reports this morning from sources that Moammar Gadhafi and one of his sons may be considering joining the convoy.
Fred Pleitgen has the latest joining us outside Bani Walid in Libya. Fred, what's our understand of this? There had been talk earlier that Gadhafi might have been in the convoy. Now we're talking about them possibly joining the convoy. Still no idea where Moammar Gadhafi is.
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely no idea where Moammar Gadhafi is. The talk, as you said, as that Moammar Gadhafi either might have already joined the convoy or was planning to join that convoy, which was then spotted in Niger, of course.
What our understanding is that apparently this convoy went from Niger coming from Algeria and might actually be going further on to Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso, of course is one of the countries that has offered exile to Moammar Gadhafi should he go there. But at this stage in time it very much isn't clear whether any high-ranking official from the Gadhafi government or, in fact, Gadhafi himself or his son might have joined this convoy. Certainly if you ask the rebels here where I am in the desert plains between Misrata and Bani Walid, they say they believe Moammar Gadhafi is probably still here in this country, although even they have no idea where he is.
Now, the big question is how many vehicles were actually part of this convoy? Some of the information we've been getting the convoy might have been up to 200 armored vehicles, others saying far less than that, maybe a few dozen. But it does seem as though a big convoy of Libyan military vehicles has made their way into Niger. Some of them our understanding is have made it to the capital of Niger. What they're doing is still very much unclear. Whether or not this is Moammar Gadhafi fleeing his country, still very much unclear at this point in time.
But I can tell you from speaking to the guys here on the front line, they say their main goal is still capturing Moammar Gadhafi and his son Saif al Islam. Ali?
VELSHI: All right, Fred, thanks very much for that. We'll stay on top of this with you.
All right, Wall Street right now looking to pick up where last week left off, in the red. U.S. stock futures are down, despite a mostly positive day overseas. In Asia, Japan's Nikkei did close down about two points, but Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up, and in Europe where trading is under way London's FTSE is up, Germany's Dax in positive territory right now as well.
The issue here is, of course, there was a rough day on international markets yesterday. Is that over or are we going to take the hangover for it here in the United States?
COSTELLO: The plot is thickening this morning in that case of the second top secret iPhone that was reportedly left behind in a bar. We're now learning the extraordinary and some might say controversial lengths Apple reportedly went to try to get that prototype back. Our report this morning from Dan Lothian -- I'm sorry, Dan Simon in San Francisco.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAN SIMON: A new not yet for sale iPhone would be considered priceless if it ever got into the hands of Apple competitors who would love to take it apart and find out what's inside. So if reports that an Apple employee lost an iPhone 5 prototype are true, then whoever found it, probably had no idea what he or she had stumbled upon.
DECLAN MCCULLOUGH, CNET CORRESPONDENT: There was an ad that appeared on Craigslist offering the phone for $200 from a Vernal Heights resident. And so we think that's where it ended up.
SIMON: The technology website CNet reported an Apple employee lost the iPhone at a bar in San Francisco.
MCCULLOUGH: This appears to be just you have a few too many drinks and leave it behind. SIMON: Apple wouldn't confirm the story, but the San Francisco police department put out a press release Friday evening that says Apple requested assistance in tracking down a lost item. Police sent four SFPD officers accompanying two Apple employees to a San Francisco home, and those employees went into the house to look for the lost item. None was recovered.
But then the publication "SF Weekly" reported that it had interviewed a man who consented to having his home searched for a phone last month after being confronted by people he presumed were police officers. No one in the group identified themselves as Apple employees. Again, no comment from Apple.
This whole story may seem a bit familiar. When Steve jobs introduced the iPhone 4 last year, he joked about whether anyone had seen it in advance.
STEVE JOBS, FORMER APPLE CEO: Stop me if you've already seen this.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: That's because many had.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm Jason Chang. This is the new iPhone.
SIMON: An iPhone 4 prototype lost in a bar and wound up in the hands of the tech blog Gizmodo, which paid $5,000 for the device.
Dan Simon, CNN, San Francisco.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: OK. What's really creepy about that story is that the San Francisco police supposedly let Apple employees into someone's home to search it. I mean, why wouldn't the police just search it like, you know, things are supposed to -- it's like Apple is big brother.
VELSHI: It's kind of are. They have your information. They know what your music tastes and TV tastes are. They know who you call. Kind of are big brother I guess, even going to launch a police force with the iPhone 5.
COSTELLO: The Apple police are coming.
ROMANS: Still to come this morning, Texas getting torched, more than 60 new wildfires burning across that state. The governor there this morning saying got a long way to go.
The sound of tornado sirens in Atlanta. In just a five mile stretch more than 100 homes damaged or destroyed.
COSTELLO: And if you're heading to the beach this week, be warned of dangerous rip tides. Katia now a monster category three hurricane capable of producing life-threatening surf conditions along the east coast. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. It's 12 minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING.
The situation in Texas right now is both urgent and historic. More than 60 new wildfires are burning this morning, some of you can call the blazes out of control and the fires are spreading. In the Houston suburb of Magnolia, at least 20 homes have burned, more than 1,600 acres have been scorched. And with high winds fanning the flames, another 150 homes are now in harm's way this morning.
A hundred and thirty miles away in Bastrop near Austin, the most destructive fire on record in Texas has destroyed almost 500 homes and some 25,000 acres. Governor Rick Perry leaving the campaign trail yesterday to return home to help organize the requests for federal aid.
Jim Spellman joining us live this morning from Bastrop. Jim, what's the latest there?
JIM SPELLMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine.
Right now, the winds are calm and it's cooler. So firefighters here, when the sun comes up, they're going to try to take advantage of that and try to get a handle on this -- on this blaze.
But, you know, these conditions here are so extreme, the drought, that the slightest thing can set off a whole new fire. We just learned a few minutes ago that a separate fire a few minutes -- a few miles away from here, did pop up yesterday destroyed 25 homes just like that. It's so fast driven by the winds that were happening yesterday and the extreme drought conditions.
So they're going to have their work cut out for them today, though. This fire, when we arrived yesterday, just this massive wall of smoke. They were hitting it with everything they could from the air. Helicopters and airplanes and ground crews trying to get a handle on it, but they just couldn't.
And with 90 percent of this state, Christine, this huge State of Texas under these kinds of drought conditions, so even when they get this one under control, another one can pop up right away. It just happens so fast, very little time for people to evacuate. Very little time for firefighters to restage and get in there.
Now, like you mentioned, Governor Perry has -- has committed all the resources they need and they're really going to need them today. They'll have more crews on their way here, they'll be able to get some federal help as well today, and try to get a handle on this.
But this is a really serious, serious fire happening at a place where there are a lot of people living. And that's the real bad combination. A lot of the other fires here in Texas over the last years have been in unpopulated areas. This one is lining up right with a lot homes and a lot of people. That's the recipe for disaster here in Texas -- Christine.
ROMANS: It's just happening so fast, you know, when these flames come, just gobble up homes so quickly.
Jim Spellman --
SPELLMAN: Yes.
ROMANS: -- thank you so much.
VELSHI: Tens of thousands of households are waking up without power this morning in Georgia. The last remnants of Tropical Storm Lee causing possible tornadoes to touch down in suburban Atlanta. More than 100 homes damaged quite substantially so or destroyed over a five mile stretch.
Check that out. The video from Cobb County just northwest of downtown, high winds knocked down trees and power lines throughout the area. Georgia Power says 14,000 people don't have power right now across the state.
We're also closely watching Katia, now a powerful Category 3 hurricane in the Atlantic, packing winds of 125 miles an hour. The National Hurricane Center tells CNN the storm will create threatening -- life threatening rip currents and surfs up and down the East Coast over the course of the next few days.
COSTELLO: OK. So Rob Marciano, give us the locusts, that's all we need.
VELSHI: That's all we don't have.
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You want -- come on now. It's been like this for a good couple years now.
COSTELLO: Yes.
MARCIANO: It's a little bit of job security. But, you know, it's all kind of eventually goes back to normal for a brief time.
All right. Katia, as you mentioned, a Category 3, it was 4 at one point last night. It's gotten a little bit of banged up here as it moves closer to Bermuda. By the way, it's 400 miles south of Bermuda, westerly -- northwesterly moving at 10 miles an hour. And like we've been saying the past few days, we anticipate the troughiness (ph) across the East Coast to curve it back out to sea. That's the good news.
But, already banging off the East Coast pretty good in the form of some big-time swells and surf and some surf and also rip tides as well.
All right. A couple of thunderstorms, one of which is producing radar indicated tornado just to the south of Raleigh in North Carolina. Lee and Moore Counties under a tornado warning for the next 20 minutes. So be aware of that. We saw several, obviously, warnings yesterday, after 20 reports of tornadoes across parts of the south, flooding in Chattanooga and parts of Mississippi as well and all this is heading up towards the north.
This watch box for tornadoes is in effect until 2:00 local time and you can already start to see some of these pop up. We get these often with land falling even tropical storms, a lot of twist in the atmosphere.
And then we have this stalled frontal boundary that continues to wreak havoc across the northeast. Washington to New York, up to Boston, we're going to see a decent amount of rain with this in the areas that saw the flooding from Irene. So flood watches have been posted.
Is it going to be a two, maybe even three-day event of some substantial rains? In the bigger cities, one to maybe two inches of rainfall. But outside of the larger cities, Pennsylvania and Upstate New York, this will feed into New Jersey as well and maybe even to parts of Vermont, we could see over two, three, four, maybe even five inches of rainfall with this. There you go. Flood watches have been posted all the way up into parts of New England with this stalled frontal boundary.
Good news for Texas, so cooler, drier -- or cool, still dry, but less winds. So two factors have improved for the firefighters to get a handle on this. No rain expected until further notice and actually for a good chunk of the U.S. a lovely fall-like air mass, but for the East Coast it is kind of a mess on this day after Labor Day.
COSTELLO: So don't put your wet vacs away just yet. Take them back out.
MARCIANO: Exactly.
ROMANS: All right. Thanks, Rob.
COSTELLO: Thank you, Rob.
MARCIANO: You bet.
COSTELLO: Now it's time -- now it's your turn to talk back on one of the big stories of the day. The question for you this morning, is the Postal Service obsolete?
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night -- OK, so it's not the Post Office's official motto, but it's how we as a culture have come to see our friendly neighborhood mailman. He or she is always there with birthday cards from grandma or that bill from the telephone company. Oh, but that is so almost completely over.
The Postal Service is in big trouble now, not only because it's running a $9 billion deficit, but because the world has changed. The rise of FedEx, UPS, and e-mail are giving Mr. Mailman a run for his money. And frankly he's losing. The Post Office delivered 171 billion pieces of mail in 2010. That's a big number, but it is down 20 percent from 2006. But that's not the least of its problems.
The Postal Service is also required to deliver mail wherever it's sent no matter what. And by law, it's forced to pay for retiree health costs for the next 75 years.
I tell you this because the Postal Service says it can't make the $5.5 billion payment for retiree health costs this month and it's in danger of defaulting. So, the Postmaster General will be asking the Senate for help today.
And maybe the answer to that plea is in our "Talk Back" question this morning. Is the Postal Service obsolete? Facebook.com/AmericanMorning, Facebook.com/AmericanMorning. I'll read your comments later this hour.
VELSHI: I wonder whether there's -- and what your respondents will say, but there may be this great middle ground. I mean, for a lot of people we always talk about how UPS and FedEx has overtaken a lot of this stuff. But a lot of people just mail stuff. You know, it's still -- it's still the cheapest way to get something somewhere.
ROMANS: Well, they want to do things. They want to put kiosks in stores and grocery stores, and the Postal Service does. They want to be able to get rid of Saturday delivery. They want to do some more things --
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: -- more quote-unquote, "modern things." All these things are going to take a little bit of help from Congress. So let them do it.
COSTELLO: Let's be honest about things. A lot of us e-mail.
VELSHI: Sure.
COSTELLO: A lot more of us will e-mail in the future and a lot of people pay their bills on-line.
VELSHI: Right.
COSTELLO: You don't even get, you know, a bill in the mail anymore.
VELSHI: Right. So maybe the infrastructure needs to be substantially smaller, which is what we're talking about here, these -- these layoffs.
ROMANS: Right.
VELSHI: All right. ROMANS: All right. Still to come this morning, look, a huge alliance here. Pepsi and the NFL announcing one of the biggest deals in U.S. sports history. We've got the sizable dollar figure for you and what it's going to mean for your beverage and your game.
VELSHI: It means you're going to buy Pepsi when you go to the stadiums.
ROMANS: I guess.
You're watching AMERICAN MORNING.
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ROMANS: "Minding Your Business" this morning.
U.S. markets open today after the holiday weekend. Stock futures are down sharply across the board this morning. Investors are still concerned about the debt problems in Europe and the jobs situation in the U.S.
Investors are rushing to the security of gold. Then it shot up during trading overnight above $1,900 an ounce. Right now, it's down just a little bit at about $1,890 an ounce.
President Obama's pick to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, will face his first Senate confirmation hearing today. Republican senators are expected to grill him on what they say are wide-reaching new powers of this agency. Cordray is the former Ohio Attorney General.
Hurricane Irene could have an effect on cotton and tobacco prices. The storm destroyed a large part of the crops grown in North Carolina. Farmers are saying this year's crop was weak going into the storm because of the drought, too, that could mean higher prices for tobacco and for cotton for you.
Today, Pepsi and the NFL are expected to announce one of the largest sponsorship deals to date in U.S. sports. "The Wall Street Journal" is reporting this morning that deal worth $2.3 billion over the next 10 years.
Don't forget, for the very latest news about your money, check out the all new CNNMoney.com.
AMERICAN MORNING will be right back after this quick break.
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ROMANS: President Obama taking on what is likely to be his biggest vulnerability in 2012, jobs. So what does the president need to say and will it make a difference if you're out of work? We'll talk to Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz on this AMERICAN MORNING.
ROMANS: Good morning. It's 31 minutes after the hour on this Tuesday, September 6th. You're looking right there at live pictures of Central Park right outside our studios here in New York.
It's going to be rainy most of the afternoon, highs only in the 60s. Rob is going to have your full national forecast.
COSTELLO: What?
ROMANS: Later.
COSTELLO: Highs only in the 60s? I'm not ready.
ROMANS: Rainy.
VELSHI: Look at the forecast all hours of the day it says 100 percent chance of precipitation. I think we're getting more rain than we did when Irene blew through.
ROMANS: There's no place to put it. That's the thing.
COSTELLO: But it will come down anyway. Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. There is a lot going on. Here are your top stories.
A monster fire, zero percent contained is burning near Austin, Texas. It is the largest of some 60 wildfires burning across Texas. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed. Fires have caused thousands of evacuations, and at least two deaths. High winds and drought are fueling the flames.
Surrender talks ongoing in Bani Walid, Libya, one of Moammar Gadhafi's last strongholds. Libya's National Transitional Council enlisting the help of tribal leaders to tell Gadhafi loyalists they will not be harmed if they surrender peacefully.
In the meantime, there is growing speculation that Gadhafi may be on the run. A huge Libyan military convoy was spotted passing through Niger in the last two days.
And the now retired General David Petraeus takes up his new position today that would be running the CIA. Petraeus retired last week after 37 years in the Army. He'll be sworn in today as the agency's 20th director replacing Leon Panetta.
VELSHI: President Obama previewing parts of his new jobs plan, telling a crowd in Detroit this country's infrastructure needs work and Americans are ready to get dirty.
Joining me now to talk more about the president's job plan, which he will present on Thursday evening, is Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She is the chair of the Democratic National Committee. Congresswoman, thank you for joining me.
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, CHAIR OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Thank you, Ali. Thanks for having me.
VELSHI: We are -- we're a bit of a crossroads here, the president has said in response to a number of critics and in response to what is now becoming anemic and no jobs growth in August that he's going to present the speech on Thursday.
And I guess it becomes tough when you start wondering what is it he is going to do that can possibly satisfy Americans who are desperate for something in the jobs creation way? What's the biggest thing the president can do, notwithstanding what he might do what would you like to see him do?
SCHULTZ: Well, the crux of your question that we're at a crossroads is absolutely the case, and what I would like to see President Obama do, like so many of my constituents who I heard from at town hall meeting in my district last week and the weeks prior is make sure that we don't go in reverse and return to the same failed policies of the past.
That the Republican proposals like we expect Mitt Romney's to include today of cut cap and balance, which will end Medicare as we know it and cut into Social Security and harm education even more than Republicans have in the past. We need to move forward and invest in our nation's infrastructure.
You know, in South Florida, Ali, my constituents are sitting on clogged roads with crumbling infrastructure that needs repair and construction workers who need to be put back to work. We have an opportunity --
VELSHI: The issues you're facing --
SCHULTZ: -- infusion on the short term.
VELSHI: I mean, in Florida, you have a problem where you have the governor saying he doesn't want these stimulus dollars. We have programs for light rail.
SCHULTZ: That's a big problem, you're right.
VELSHI: Mitt Romney in his sneak preview is talking about changing the tax code, which I think we all agree we can change the tax code. We can streamline some of the stuff in there.
But then he talks about reducing regulation, repealing health care reform. What's your push back on that? What do you say to people who say that is going to create jobs in America?
SCHULTZ: Well, I can't understand -- I mean, the bar for Mitt Romney is pretty high in his proposal that he's going to be releasing. If it matches what his track record is, which is 47 in job creation as governor of Massachusetts and never recovering all the jobs that they lost in 2001 during that recession, then we've got a big problem.
What I expect is that we'll hear more about tax cuts, more about helping, you know, big business with deregulation, allowing the fox to guard the hen house and that's what got us into a huge economic problem in the first place with massive job loss.
We need to work together. We need to make sure that we focus on job creation, putting people back to work. Unfortunately, Ali, the Republicans seem only to be interested in one job, Barack Obama's, and the president has been urging Republicans and Democrats and that's what I think he'll do Thursday night, for us to come to the table, work together and focus on everyone's job. That's what I'm hearing from my constituents.
VELSHI: Your constituents must be as frustrated we hear from our viewers and in our polling from Americans in general who just don't think Congress has what it takes to move on and get something done, whether it's about the debt ceiling or whatever it is that the president ends up talking about on Thursday. What's your response to that? I mean, it does seem like you are in a somewhat paralyzed Congress?
SCHULTZ: Well, it's -- it's almost like we're paralyzed on one side. It feels like Congress has had a stroke and lost all their -- all feeling and ability to move on the right side of the body. The -- which is where the Republicans sit.
The Democrats sit on the left side of the chamber and we've been ready, willing and able to move forward together under President Obama's leadership. In fact, during the debt ceiling crisis, there was opportunity after opportunity for the Republicans to do that.
Unfortunately, they seemed strangled by their extreme right wing and the Tea Party. At the end of the day, we need to clear out all this partisanship and focus on getting people back to work. President Obama will lay out a vision on Thursday night that I think will, you know, not have a long ramp, will have a short ramp to job creation and picking up the pace of recovery. All the Republicans have to do is step up to the plate with us and so we can move forward together.
VELSHI: You, as the chair of the Democratic National Committee, are going to be having to help candidates talk about what they're going to do in the next election. What do you do when they say ultimately the deciding factor is going to be that the economy is better a year from now or there are more jobs? What is that response?
I think we've lost contact with Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz. She can't hear me. All right, I'll ask her that the next time I get an opportunity to. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, thanks for joining us. I guess we've lost her.
ROMANS: Bummer.
VELSHI: I know. Good discussion, nonetheless. We'll continue it again.
ROMANS: All right, still to come new questions in the U.K. hacking scandal, four former News Corp. executives face a grilling today about what they knew and when. We're live in the latest -- in London rather with the latest.
COSTELLO: It was one amazing day for tennis great Roger Federer, heading to the quarterfinals after slamming, count them four aces at the U.S. Open. You are watching AMERICAN MORNING. It's 38 minutes past the hour.
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ROMANS: Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. A big day in the U.K. phone hacking scandal.
VELSHI: There are new questions this morning, four former Rupert Murdoch aides facing tough questions today in the News Corp phone hacking scandal. Zain Verjee live in London with the details. Good morning, Zain.
ZAIN VERJEE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Good morning guys. This is going to be a really big deal today. It could be pivotal because at the heart of this is the question, did James Murdoch lie? Did he mislead people on the parliamentary committee when he said he didn't really know about the extent, the scale of the phone hacking scandal?
Now James Murdoch previously has said that an investigation showed no evidence of widespread phone hacking. So what we have today is four former officials, a human resources chief, a former editor of "News of the World" a couple top legal guys, all in front of the committee and they are likely to challenge the fact that James Murdoch didn't know.
So in other words, there's an e-mail at the heart of all of this that James Murdoch said he didn't see. There are a couple guys out there today talking to the committee saying he did see this critical e-mail that did say that the phone hacking scandal was widespread and it was not limited to one single reporter.
COSTELLO: You know what I find amazing about this, didn't James Murdoch turn down a big bonus he was supposed to get because -- because of this scandal? And now this comes out. The fact that he was going to get a bonus anyway is the thing that amazes me.
VERJEE: Right. Well, you know, he did that. It was probably for optics, you know, in a situation that was so terrible for "News of the World," News Corp., News International. That was something maybe he wanted to do to make himself look better, to make the company look better.
But this hasn't gone away. I mean, this is a really serious issue. If this committee decides that James Murdoch lied to them, they're going to call him back and they're going to want more answers and it's going to put more pressure on News Corp., more pressure on James Murdoch who may, some analysts say, be so humiliated he may be forced to step down.
ROMANS: Wow. All right. Zain Verjee, thanks. Tawdry, tabloid scandal that keeps going and going.
COSTELLO: The juiciest and most fun kind. This one affected people's lives, but it is fascinating to watch the developments.
We asked you to talk back on one of the big stories of the day. We asked this question, is the postal service obsolete. This from Mary, "U.S. postal service is not obsolete. There are millions of Americans who rely on the service. Not everyone has Smart phones or even e-mail especially older Americans. Having said that, to keep itself relevant, it must update to 21st Century needs and efficiencies including the pensions. The U.S. can look to other first world countries that have already had to face these problems for idea."
This from Lori. "I've worked for the post office for over 20 years as a rural carrier. During Hurricane Irene, while people were without electricity for computers to pay bills online, we were sorting mail in the post office using flashlights and did not miss one day of delivery. This goes on all the time across the country. During disasters, mail still goes through. Technology can be wonderful but this country is slowly losing the real social network, actually talking to each other."
This from Samantha. "The postal service is a vital organ to the United States. It's not obsolete, as it under appreciated. The postal service was a key figure in our economic growth when our country was still young and growing and should be maintained as a reliable safety net for the United States."
And you know all about that, Christine.
ROMANS: Yes, incredibly -- it's incredibly sad to think about all the people who are listening to this story and are worried about whether they're going to have a job or whether -- that's what really worries me about this because part of the solution for the postmaster general is being able to lay off up to 120,000 people.
VELSHI: Right.
ROMANS: For a lot of folks, this is a foothold into the middle class that won't be there.
VELSHI: Right.
ROMANS: And it won't be there, right?
COSTELLO: Exactly.
Thank you for your responses, Facebook.com/Americanmorning.
ROMANS: Time now for today's "Romans numeral." That number is 227, two, two, seven. No, it's not that '80s sitcom. Here's a hint --
VELSHI: The price of a quarter ounce of gold.
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ROMANS: It's not about your money and it's not about your job!
VELSHI: What?
ROMANS: But it could affect your fantasy football picks this week. That's right. I'm taking the "Romans' Numeral" to the NFL. AMERICAN MORNING back in 90 seconds.
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VELSHI: 47 minutes after the hour. A lot going on this morning. Here's what you need to know to start your day.
Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign trying to regain its footing after losing two top strategists. Campaign manager, Ed Rollin, is stepping into an advisory roll due to health concerns, and deputy campaign manager, David Polyansky, is leaving the campaign altogether.
Texas a virtual tender box. More than 60 wildfires are now burning across the state. The largest fire in Bastrop County, near Austin, has destroyed nearly 500 homes and killed at least two people.
Hurricane Katia, now a Category 3, as it churns out into the Atlantic. The storm is expected to spare the U.S. east coast a hit, but forecasters are warning of dangerous rip currents.
In just a few hours, the postmaster general will testify at a Senate hearing on preventing the shutdown of the cash-strapped post office. It may default on an upcoming payment to a retirement fund. If that happens, officials promise no interruption in mail service.
Third seated Roger Federer advancing to the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open. Federer beat Juan Monaco, of Argentina, to reach the quarter finals for the 30th straight time in a grand slam tournament.
You're caught up on the day's headlines. AMERICAN MORNING back in 60 seconds.
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ROMANS: A decade later, 9/11 still a tragedy that none of us will ever forget. But some people are literally still dealing with the pain of this attack. Thousands of responders are suffering from health consequences in the 10-year aftermath.
COSTELLO: It's hard to believe, isn't it?
Chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, has spent the past year investigating the health fallout for 9/11 responders in a special called "Terror in the Dust." He joins us this morning from Atlanta.
So tell us about this, Sanjay.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, at the 10-year mark, from a scientific perspective, you have the opportunity now to look at science, aggregate a lot of that data and figure out what exactly happened, and what are the relationships between this dust and the various health effects. Obviously, a lot has been made of this, even recently, some of it controversial. But I will tell you this. First of all, the dust itself -- this was a pretty unique situation. I guess that goes without saying. but the sort of forcing together, thrusting together of all these various chemicals, from jet fuel and benzene to asbestos, all put together and then coating dust which lingered and hung like a mist over lower Manhattan for some time, that has been the real question for some time. A lot of people have said, what was in that dust? Did people collect the dust and try to figure out exactly what it was? Well, the answer is yes. Doctor Paul Lioy is a professor at Rutgers University. He works in these kinds of issues specifically.
I talked to him about this. Take a listen.
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DR. PAUL LIOY, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY: You've got fire retardants. You've got combustion products. You have plastics and other parts of the periodic table.
GUPTA (voice-over): Gold and mercury from tens of thousands of fluorescent light bulbs, lead from thousands of computer monitors, titanium from paint on the trade center walls, asbestos that coated lower beams of the trade center buildings, there was cement, glass, carpet fibers, ceiling tiles, even human hairs. In all, 1.5 million tons of the stuff.
LIOY: You had burning aircraft. You had burning furniture. You had burning buildings. That burning material included the jet fuel. We don't know what the gases were in this initial complex mixture that was inhaled by everyone because no one could measure it. That is the great unknown in this.
GUPTA: Is it always going to be unknowable?
LIOY: Yes.
GUPTA: There will always be mysteries about the dust?
LIOY: Yes.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: What he is specifically talking about there in that in the immediate 48 hours after the attacks, there were these volatile compounds which were affecting people, they could breathe it, but then they just dissipated into the atmosphere and they were never collected, so they can't be a part of this final analysis.
The papers that are coming out now are looking back over the last 10 years and figuring out who was exposed and what their illnesses are, and trying to put it altogether.
VELSHI: Sanjay, you mentioned in your piece some of the things that were there, some of the compounds that would have combined and burned. Has there been some sense of trying to emulate that to see what it would create? GUPTA: That's a great question. They have done some animal models to this extent, Ali, trying to combine these chemicals, put it on some sort of vehicle, in this case, dust, and have animals breathe it in. The problem though, Ali, still is this unknowable part of it. I didn't expect this part of this when we were investigating, but the idea that these volatile compounds just disappeared into the air makes the final equation, the final product that people are breathing in that much more difficult to figure out.
ROMANS: I can remember how the wind would shift and then you would even get the smell. And the dust would be --
VELSHI: Yes. Yes.
ROMANS: And the cloud of fume would be coming out of --
VELSHI: Right.
ROMANS: -- even the Deutsche Bank building. Because that building, interesting enough, Sanjay, was one of the first buildings that had this -- this webbing within the concrete, so it stored all of this material. And as that building moved and heaved, more of the stuff was coming out. First responder --
COSTELLO: Yes.
ROMANS: It was just horrific. Gosh, I want to definitely check out the "Terror in the Dust."
Thanks, Sanjay.
COSTELLO: Absolutely, thanks, Sanjay.
You can see the full investigation of the health fallout from 9/11, plus rare, never-before-seen footage of the aftermath of the disaster in Dr. Gupta's documentary, "Terror in the Dust." That airs Wednesday at 11:00 p.m. eastern.
ROMANS: All, right, I was taking it to the NFL, time now for this morning's "Roman's Numeral." The number, 227.
VELSHI: I said it was quarter of an ounce of gold but I meant an eighth.
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ROMANS: No. It's the number of consecutive games Peyton Manning has started. 227 games, but because of lingering neck pain after surgery, he is now listed as doubtful for this Sunday's opening game.
VELSHI: 227 consecutive games! Wow.
ROMANS: Isn't that amazing? That's put him back to, what, 1997?
COSTELLO: No, Brett Favre has --
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COSTELLO: Brett Favre has the record, right? So I was hoping that he would be Brett Favre because, you know, Brett Favre is irritating.
(CROSSTALK)
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COSTELLO: But I do feel bad for Peyton Manning, because what a great player.
VELSHI: Well, Brett Favre retired, so it's OK.
COSTELLO: We think. Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
COSTELLO: All right.
VELSHI: All right, coming up next hour, we are following those wildfires in Texas, feeding on remarkably dry conditions. There's a drought in Texas. Growing in high wind gusts, destroying hundreds of homes. The state may be at higher risk today.
ROMANS: Calling all Trekkies, the original Lieutenant Uhura will join us here in the next hour to talk about --
VELSHI: Nice.
ROMANS: She's so cool. She's going to talk about a new "Star Trek" exhibit and also something more important, NASA's new mission to the moon.
You are watching AMERICAN MORNING. It's 55 minutes till the hour -- I mean, past the hour.
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