tv PBS News Hour PBS August 5, 2011 7:00pm-8:00pm EDT
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captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> lehrer: new jobs numbers offered a glimmer of hope after a bad week for the economy that ended with another volatile day on wall street. good evening, i'm jim lehrer. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown. on the "newshour" tonight, we get three perspectives on what the latest unemployment figures and the market swings mean for fears of recession and hopes for a rebound. >> lehrer: then, judy woodruff reports on the new orleans police officers found guilty of killing two people after hurricane katrina. >> they took the twinkle out of my eye. the song out of my heart they blew out of my candle, but it's going to be all right.
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because justice has been served. >> brown: mark shields and ross douthat-- filling in for david brooks-- analyze the week's news. >> lehrer: and fred de sam lazaro looks at the ethical questions raised by western couples hiring surrogates to carry their babies in india. >> if the woman suffers an injury, if the woman has a health problem due to childbirth, if there's a long-term chronic condition, then what? >> lehrer: that's all ahead on tonight's "newshour." major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> well, the best companies are driven by new ideas. >> our history depends on new ideas. we spend billions on advanced technologies. >> it's all about investing in the future. >> we can find new energy-- more cleaner, safer and smarter. >> collaborating with the best in the field. >> chevron works with the smartest people at leading universities and tech companies. >> and yet, it's really basic.
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>> it's paying off everyday. and the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> brown: after a scary thursday, all eyes today were on the latest jobs report from the labor department. it provided at least some relief and led to another wild day on wall street. the news from the labor department was modestly better than expected. employers added 117,000 jobs
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last month. and the unemployment rate dropped from 9.2% to 9.1%. estimates from may and june were also revised to show that hiring was better than originally thought. government jobs continued to be lost in june-- 37,000 in all. but the majority of those stemmed from the temporary shutdown of minnesota's government. in a speech at washington's navy yard aimed at improving hiring of unemployed veterans, president obama said today's numbers were a good step forward. >> we need to create a self- sustaining cycle where people are spending and companies are hiring and the economy is growing. we know that will take some time. but what i want the american people and our partners around the world to know is this-- we are going to get through this. things will get better. and we're going to get there together. >> brown: after a week of pessimism and anxiety over the economy, americans were left wondering what's next.
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>> it just doesn't seem like it's getting any better. it seems like it's getting worse but everybody's saying "ok it's picking up a little bit" but it's not. i guess they're saying that for morale but it's tough, it's tough. i'm trying to be optimistic and i'm thinking that the economy is on the upswing so until something drastic happens i'm going to keep that opinion. >> brown: in the meantime, after its largest drop since 2008 yesterday, wall street rallied initially on the jobs news. but that was followed by hours of wild see-sawing up and down, a total swing of more than 400 points on the dow jones industrial average. for the day, the dow gained more than 60 points to close at 11,444. while the nasdaq lost just under 24 points to close at 2,532. wall streets turmoil came after another bad night on overseas markets.
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in asia, stocks fared poorly amid growing panic that the u.s. could be sliding into a double dip recession. >> ( translated ): we must keep our attention on the currencies, but it is also important to monitor the market carefully after the plunge in the dow. >> brown: in europe, stocks tumbled further as doubts spread about the eurozone's own spiraling debt crisis. borrowing costs have skyrocketed, particularly for italy and spain's government. >> ( translated ): i am worried. of course, i am worried. you never know when you might be out of a job. >> brown: italy's leader, silvio berlusconi said today he would speed up budget reforms at home. he also called for a special meeting of g-7 finance ministers to address the larger global situation. in germany, public reaction was varied. back in the u.s., even the somewhat improved employment picture came with major caveats, as the labor department also released somber statistics on those already out of a job. the long term unemployed-- those out of work for 27 weeks or longer-- dipped slightly in
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july. but the average length of unemployment increased to a record 40.4 weeks-- more than nine months. and we assess the day and the way forward now, with lisa lynch, former chief economist at the labor department, now dean of the heller school for social policy and managment at brandeis university. sam stovall, chief investment strategist for standard and poor's. and greg ip, u.s. economics editor of "the economist" magazine and author of "the little book of economics: how the economy works in the real world." lisa lynch, we'll start with you. we've looked at the numbers many times over the last month. some relief today? >> yes, certainly after all the drama we had over the past week, there was a collective sigh of relief when the numbers were released this morning. in particular when you look at the gains in private sector employment, 154,000 jobs added by the private sector. but at the same time, the headline number of just
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117,000 net new jobs is only enough to keep up with the growth of the working age population. and really doesn't do anything to make a significant dent into the pool of 14 million workers out of work. >> brown: where did you see when you look at sectors, anything jump out at you in terms of growth or potential growth? >> well, the good news is in today's report a lot of the employment gains were distributed across different parts of the economy. so we have the old reliable health care sector added over 30,000 net new jobs. manufacturing added 24,000 net new jobs. half of them in the auto industry. retail sector was up, business and technical services were up. mining was up, leisure and hospitality were up as well. so we had broad growth in employment, modest, but across many sectors of the economy. plus we saw hourly wages
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increase by 10%. so those were areas where we had some good news in today's report. >> brown: sam stovall, the number came out, things looked good a bit, and then there were some hours where it was not for the weak at heart to watch it bounce up and down. hundreds of points at a time. what was going on? >> well, jeff, i figured that what was happening tomorrow was what happened on monday where instead of getting a one or two-day rally we were only getting a one or two-hour rally. and so i think what investors were basically saying by voting with their shares is that this is just one data point, let's compare it with the second quarter growth domestic product, which surprised us to the down side. the other indicators like the institute of supply management's manufacturing and nonmanufacturing reports which were disappointing as well as the recent factoring orders. so i think a lot of investors are very worried that we will be slipping back into recession. >> brown: of course part of the question was whether the market had overreacted
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yesterday, right? trying to figure out where to settle. >> exactly. i think a lot of investors were getting out while the getting might have still been good. ahead of the jobless report. because basically investors were worried that we could end up seeing a number similar to last month of about 18 or 20,000, or maybe even see a negative number, and they just didn't want to have to live through that. >> brown: and i want to ask you one more question this first round here. there have been rumors today of a potential downgrade and it was supposed to come after the markets closed by s&p. your company, a downgrade of the u.s.. what do you know? >> actually i know nothing. i am on the equity research side, which operates independently of the rating side. so it's sort of like asking somebody at the i.r.s. if they think the fed will raise interest rates. >> brown: okay, i'll let you off the hook. greg ip, let me bring you in here. those rumors though, are they playing a role in what was happening today? >> possibly. there's all sorts of rumors going on, essentially we're in
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that period whereverry little bit of news seems to push the market one way or the other. yesterday was all about you're, and the european banks seeming to be tentative about how much support they would give to the economy, yesterday they said they would only buy the bonds of portugal and ireland. today there's some possibility that they will buy the bonds of italy if italy can get its fiscal act together. that's important because italy is by far the largest economy yet to come under attack because of the problems that, of this very large debt. but there are other things going on. i think the main thing that we've seen happen in the last few weeks is that the market has recalibrated where they think the u.s. economy is and where it's going. go back, people said the economy is weak but it a temporary soft patch because gas prices went up and there were supply disruptions out of japan. then we got a series of numbers that suggested maybe it was worse, the very bad gdp number. today's employment report was very important because it was the first big indicator we have for july and it was a positive one, not
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spectacularly positive, but it was positive. so if you thought yesterday that there was a very high chance that the economy was going back in recession, you probably dialed those probabilities back today. >> brown: that's the recalibration you're saying? >> yes. >> brown: lisa lynch, you said earlier that it's a small number, it's a positive number, but not nearly as much as we would need if we're going to make a dent in the unemployment number. >> right. and there are head winds that you see even in this report, in particular the decrease of employment in the government sector at the state and local level. now, the state number dropped by 24,000 and that was basically completely explained by the issues in the state of meet. but -- the state of minnesota. but many workers were laid off in the education sector and that will continue throughout the summer and going into the fall. given what congress has decided to do in the context
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of the debate on increasing the debt ceiling, state and local governments have no life line coming from the federal government. so we're going to continue to see a tale of two cities. state and local governments laying off workers and hopefully the increases in private sector employment being sufficient to be larger than that and start making a dent into that pool of 14 million unemployed workers, but that is yet to come. and we need to be seeing numbers of 200 to 300,000 workers being added to the economy in order to start feeling like we're moving forward as opposed to just bumping along on the bottom. >> brown: sam stovall, when you listen to that and you look at unemployment, a monthly unemployment number, do people on wall street look at that as a lagging indicator? a forward indicator? where does that fit into the calibration of where the economy is going? >> it's usually a lagging
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indicator. unemployment tends to peak about nine months after the recession ends. and actually should have started coming down by now. but usually what we find is that interest rates, whether it's an inverted yield curve, or we find a stock market performance itself in conjunction with weaker economic data, is probably a better indicator of a recession than probably will be coming down the road six months from now. so i would say that even though we've got better than expected numbers today, we did raise our risk of recession to 35% from 30%, because of the other data points that had been disappointing. >> brown: and how much do you see the earlier this week the debt deal, and the questions about what government can do that we've had all week, how much does that play into the equation at this point? >> i think it plays pretty handyly into it, because a lot of people questioned whether the government has run out of silver bullets.
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how many more options are available to them in order to attempt to stimulate the economy once again. the federal reserve will be meeting next week and i think people are hoping for some sort of a read between the lines statement indicating that there might be a third round of quantitative easing or purchasing of bonds, et cetera, and so just some sort of a stimulus that can be afforded to the market, but i any as we were saying before, they might have run out of options. >> brown: greg, this is your area of course, watching washington. >> sure, yes. and i think actually typically when the markets go through these periods, there is always that kind of comfort at the back of their mind that if things got bad enough policy makers could move in to turn things around. you would get interest rate cuts by the federal reserve, you would get stimulus from the fiscal authorities and the situation right now people are questioning that, is there anything left to help us out. the finish could bring out out program of quantitative easing,
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in fact i think it probably will. here we are still with an unemployment rate that's not coming down. as for fiscal policy, what was significant about the debt ceiling deal this week was not that it was a case one way or the other, but congress and the president seemed to have shifted to austerity, which we all agree needs to be done over a five to 10-year frame but is probably unwise in the next 12 months. yet what we do have is i debt deal that will tighten the screws, and i think that's troubling for the market. >> do you sense anything going on behind the scenes of the treasury or the administration about okay we've done the deal and may not be what anybody wanted, but you what do we do know? >> it only took hours after signing that deal that problem and his officials said okay now let's try and do some stuff to help the economy. i have a few specifics in mind. there was a payroll tax cut enacted last september, it expire this is december. the administration would like to extend that for another year. unemployment insurance benefits were extended last
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december, those extensions also expire at the end of this year, they would like to extend that again into next year. they would also like to have infrastructure spending, a new highway authorization bill. there the odds start to get worse because we have a congress which is not sympathetic to more spending. >> brown: all right, we'll leave it there. greg ip, lisa lynch, sam stovall, thank you all very much. >> thank you. >> my pleasure. >> lehrer: still to come on the "newshour": guilty verdicts for five new orleans police officers. shields and douthat and surrogate mothers in india. but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets across syria again today, demanding an end to president bashar assad's regime. the syrian government proclaimed victory in crushing the uprising in one city, hama. troops there opened fire on demonstrators, klilengt a ast 13 of them, on this first friday of the holy month of ramadan. we have a report narrated by jonathan miller of "independent television news."
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>> reporter: even a house of god on a friday isn't safe on this a day of protest dubbed by demonstrators as the day god is with us. syrian soldiers fired into this mosque in homs, hitting one worshipper and causing panic. in damascus, they surround another mosque. there was live firing and teargas on the streets of the capital this afternoon. ordinary syrian people prepared to die to see the back of basher al assad, the dictator prepared to kill to stay in power. this is the city of hama this morning, day six of the siege. 250 dead since sunday, one resident claimed today.
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"we're being slaughtered like sheep," he said. basher al-assad's father killed 20,000 people here 30 years ago. disbelief as history repeats itself. these pictures from a swiss the protests are huge and countrywide. from the capital to the hearthstone of rebellion in the south to homs, al rastan, through hama to latakia on the mediterranean. idlib in the north, aleppo, hasakah, al-qamishli in the east, deir azzor, al-mayadin, and al-bukamal. and that's only the big ones. >> sreenivasan: earlier today i talked about the crackdown with a spokesperson for a newly formed organization in damascus called the coalition of free damascenes for peaceful change. for safety reheon ts, man i spoke with used the pseudonym alexander page. >> a we're seeing is protests every day, evening protests now mainly because of the that it's ramadan and that's when people finish their fast.
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people go to prayers and that being the easiest way. so basica ty every evening around 10.mha. wsit we're ceeing is massre protests, in ntral damascus now, which we won't see much of inçó the past few weeks or months. the city has been isolated. what they've done is they've put checkpoints up all around the city and basically split each suburb away from the other suburb, because what the organizing committees are trying to do is they're trying to gather up elth protesters from all the areas to go down into one large square in central damascus. and that's been impossible because of the checkpoints that are being put up. >> president obama spoke with the leaders of france and germany today and they agreed to consider further steps to pressure assad's regime to stop the crackdown. all three leaders condemned the violence. government troops opened fire on government troops opened fire on famine victims in somalia today, killing at least seven people.
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witnesses said the attack happened at the largest refugee camp in mogadishu when looting began during a food distribution. about 100,000 refugees have fled to mogadishu in the last two months. approximately 4,000 federal aviation administration employees who were on furlough can return to work on monday. president obama signed a bill into law to end the two-week partial shutdown of the agency, after the u.s. senate passed it by unanimous consent this morning. congress went into its august recess without resolving a standoff over cuts to rural air service. this measure only extends the agency's funding through mid-september. the shutdown cost the government roughly $400 million in uncollected airline taxes. nasa launched a robotic explorer to jupiter today. it will take the spacecraft juno five years to journey to jupiter -- the largest planet in the solar system. it lifted off from cape canaveral in florida this afternoon, and will be powered by three huge solar panels. scientists hope to study how jupiter was made. it is believed to be the oldest planet in the solar system. honda announced a recall of a million and a half vehicles
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today to repair a software problem that affects their automatic transmissions. another million cars were recalled overseas. the recall affects four-cylinder accords for the model years 2005 to 2010, cr-vs from 2007 to 2010, and 2005 to 2008 honda elements. if the software is not updated, it could damage the automatic transmission when the driver quickly shifts between gears. so far, no injuries or deaths have been reported. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to jeff. >> brown: and we turn to the new convictions in the continuing federal probe of police behavior after hurricane katrina. a jury found five current or former police officers guilty today in the deadly shootings on a new orleans bridge. judy woodruff has the story. >> woodruff: in the chaos following the historic flooding from 2005's hurricane katrina, another tragedy unfolded. one week after katrina's initial blow to the city, police shot
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six unarmed people on new orleans' danziger bridge after officers said they were responding to the distress call of another shooting. two of those six were killed: 17-year old james brissette and a 40-year old mentally disabled man, ronald madison. madison was killed when police chased him and his brother lance who was with him as they tried to find safe haven. lance madison was later arrested and accused of firing at police, according to prosecutors. but today in federal court-- a jury convicted a former police officer-- a retired sargent-- and three current members of the new orleans police department on charges stemming from a cover up. all but one were convicted of civil rights violations stemming from the shootings as well. james brissette's mother spoke of her loss after the verdict. >> they took the twinkle out of my eye. the song out of my heart they
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blew out of my candles, but it's going to be all right. justice is served. >> woodruff: and lance madison, who lost his brother and nearly lost his freedom, expressed his thanks to the jury >> i am thankful for having some closure after six long years of praying for justice. i am most grateful to my family especially my brother romero. without the support and work of my family, i may still be in prison on false charges and the truth about what happened on the danziger bridge might never have been known. >> woodruff: the trial was a high-profile test of the justice department's effort to clean up a police department marred by a reputation for corruption and brutality. a total of 20 current or former new orleans police officers were charged last year in a series of federal probes. most of the cases center on actions during the aftermath of the storm which plunged the city into a state of
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lawlessness. two cases that have already gone to trial. jim letten is the u.s. attorney for louisiana's eastern district. >> today's verdict sends powerful, unmistakable message to public servants to law enforcement officers and to citizens served and to world. that message is that public officials and especially law enforcement will be held accountable for acts and that any abuse of power, especially that power that violates rights and civil liberties will have serious consequences. >> woodruff: sentencing is set for december 14. and for more about the case and the inquiry into the new orleans' police department-- campbell robertson has been covering the trial, including today's verdict for the "new york times" and joins me now
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from new orleans. campbell robertson, thank you for being with us. what would you add to the account we just shared about the prosecution's case? you wrote that it was a grisly account. i believe that was your word. >> well, this account started coming out over some time. there had been five police officers who pled guilty, some of whom were actually firing at the bridge that day, other ones who were involved in the coverup, one of them described as a massacre. so, as those guilty pleas were coming out, the, while everyone knew this was, everyone had suspected that this was a very bad scene, the grislyness of it began to come out one at a time with those guilty pleas. so when the prosecutors finally put it altogether, it was a pretty harrowing account of what happened that day. >> woodruff: and there were
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accounts of the police tampering with the evidence, planting a gun. tell us a little about that part of the prosecution's case. >> well, it's funny, the coverup, the prosecutors say the coverup began immediately at the bridge. there were officers said we have to make sure that this doesn't appear as a massacre. and they described it as even officers who participated and later pleaded guilty described it as a pretty inept and incompetent coverup, while people were trying to get stories straight and making up names whole cloth of witnesses and at one point one of the defendants who was convicted today, a former retired sergeant kaufman, came up with a gun that he refered to other officers as a ham sandwich, quote unquote, and dropped it at the scene because obviously it was crucial for investigators to show that this, that citizens were actually firing on the police.
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site was a justifiable shooting. >> woodruff: what was the main thread of the defense that the police officers put forward? >> there were little elements here and there where certain defense attorneys tried to argue that maybe using sort of snippets of initial testimony that maybe the citizens were armed or maybe there were other shooters in other areas. but the fundamental defense, which the same one they used last year in a katrina related police killing trial, was that it was a chaotic time and that we can't judge the officers who stayed and that they should be considered, they should be lauded for staying and that they came into a scene that they thought was fraught with danger, they had been told there were shooters, so we shouldn't criminalize their instincts. now, the prosecution jim letten said today that that's exactly the opposite, that in chaotic instances after katrina that's exactly when you need the police to act, to be the most trustworthy and
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dependable. and that obviously there are rules that you need to assess threats before firing. and this firing lasted for something like 50 seconds. so i think the jury felt that the argument that this was just chaos and that we should look upon that with some mitigating circumstances, given the length of the shooting and the persistence, it was hard to buy that. >> woodruff: campbell robertson, what was the atmosphere in the courtroom during the trial and today when the verdicts were read? >> today when the verdicts were read the judge, the very no-nonsense judge, repeatedly insisted that there be no outbreaks, there be no noise, that there be complete silence in the courtroom, which made for this kind of eerie scene, where they round out 25 counts, some of them with mull spell guilty pronouncements, many them, as this sort of litany of guiltys came out it was
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completely quiet. and after athey finished he spoke to the jury for a few minutes about their service and the families of the defendants were weeping quietly. and there was no outburst on the part of the victims, but they went out afterwards and they were somewhat subdued as well. i think the whole thing was kind of overwhelming, frankly, after six years. >> woodruff: yes. have you had a chance to get a sense of how the city of new orleans, the people of new orleans have reacted to this or been reacting to the trial? >> well, the mayor put out a statement today, i mean i do think it's interesting that this isn't talked about by even the victims as an isolated incident. it really put into the context of the city over the last six years, which almost everything is down here, because the city is almost one big narrative. and with the struck els that the police department has had and the struggles that the city has had with their own police department, i think this is seen as hopefully a turning point. there's a lot to come and there's a lot of skepticism.
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but even some of the, even lance madison talked about maybe this is a turning point for the community and can bring some healing. i guess we'll see from that. >> woodruff: and the justice department is pursuing these other cases meanwhile. >> true, they have criminal cases that are ongoing, they also have a wide ranging civil case, like they did with the lapd in the 90s, which would end their negotiations with the city right now for a consent decree, which would mandate some pretty wide ranging reforms. senior justice officials say that they've never seen anything quite as bad as the new orleans police department when they found it. >> woodruff: so one can't look at this as an isolated case, an is a lighted trial? >> this is probably the most highñi profile of the trials, but is by no means isolated. >> woodruff: we're going to leave it there, campbell robertson with the "new york times" joining us from new orleans. thank you very much. >> thank you.
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>> lehrer: and to the analysis of shields and douthat. syndicated columnist mark shields and "new york times" columnist ross douthat. david brooks is away tonight. mark, where do today's or the recent economic numbers fit into what passes for government and politics in washington right now? >> i think it was a psychological lift. i don't think it was an economic breakthrough. but at a time of relentlessly d news, the fact that it was not negative made it very positive. >> lehrer: you're talking about the jobs report. what about the stock market? >> well, the stock market is sobering to say the least. and it is, you know, anybody that's figured out, the stock market to me has just been what do people think is going to happen on the economy and generally speaking people think the economy is bad, and they're not optimistic about the future. >> lehrer: ross, do you agree with what was said in the earlier discussion that the government doesn't have any silver bullets left to do
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anything about this thing right now? the economic thing. >> i think in the short term that's definitely true. i think that given the political correlation of forces there's just a real limit on what certainly what the white house can push for, and i think everything that was talked about earlier from the payroll tax cut extension, unemployment benefits and so on, is really just incredibly small, given what i think we understand to be the scope of the problem, which is why it seems very likely that we will in fact get yet another round of quantitative easing from the fed at some point in the next few months. >> lehrer: do you agree with what the man from s&p told jeff that some of the influence on the stock market at least was the terrible debate and process that got between the president and the congress that ended in this debt, this debt bill, legislation let's you call it.
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>> actually my sense is that yesterday's stock market numbers are more a sign that actually washington isn't necessarily the center of the economic universe and that there was what we saw was sort of a sigh of modest relief from wall street following the deal on the debt ceiling and then everybody turned their attention to europe and sort of threw up their hands and said, oh, wait, you know, europe is going down the tube. so i'm skeptical that the big selloff had that much to do with washington politics. i think it had much more to do with politics in italy, brussels and everywhere in between. >> lehrer: do you see it the same way, mark? >> i honestly don't know. i do think there's a question about what the administration has to do, that's the ballgame for them in 2012 is jobs. and anything else is a diverse, whether it's debt ceiling, whatever it is, it has to be jobs, jobs. and i think they have to think beyond their comfort zone, whether it is an infrastructure bank, a national infrom a structure
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bank, a major effort, whether it's contractors have to buy america, unless they have an exception. i think there's a number of things you can do, you have to extend unemployment benefits, you've got to keep demand at some level, and plus to ease the pain that people are going through. i just think that's where the 2012 elections will be fought. it's not going to be fault on deficits. >> but don't you think, mark, that there's a danger for the president, and everybody talks about making the pivot to jobs. but if you make the pivot to jobs and spend all of your time talking about jobs and the jobs don't materialize, i mean, this has been the position the white house has been in, in a sense, for the past year. you had the recovery summer, they've sort of kept trying to refor cloudy pivot to jobs without having -- reforic -- rhetoricly pivot to jobs. >> i think they have to offer
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initiatives, but in a sense the republicans want to oppose, whether it's jobs programs or an infrastructure bank, i think they put too much confidence, honestly, in the free trade agreements with korea and colombia, because the preeminent republican said americans have lost confidence in free trade agreements. and they see the united states gets rolled and it becomes e poxy for outsourcing jobs and shipping them overseas. >> lehrer: do you agree with mark, ross, that 2012 is going to be about this issue of what the government can do or not do, is it about deficits or is it about getting jobs through government programs or government action? >> i think it's going to be much, much, how many much's can i add, more about jobs than about deficits. especially since there's now been at least some kind of a partial quasi-sort of deal
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that the white house can point to on the deficit. and i think it's going to be a debate about who do you blame for the current economic situation. barack obama or george w. bush. and i think ultimately the obama white house will be stuck running a fairly negative campaign basically arguing that who ever the republican nominee is, whether it's mitt romney, rick perry or somebody else, they're just a continuation of the bush administration, and if you look at the polls and more americans still blame bush for the current economic woes than blame obama, and i think that's going to be the focus of the white house's strategy. >> lehrer: how does that fit into the new poll, yesterday's poll that was out today, cbs "new york times" poll about the low opinion that the american people have of the congress? >> congress as somebody once see serves two purposes, it makes the united nations look efficient by contrast and it makes the president's job rating look good. but we've been through three straight elections in a row,
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jim, that have repealed one of the great maxims of american politics. all politics is local. all politics is not local. and it is local until it's national. we've gone through three national elections where they've thrown the ins out. 2006 it was the republicans and 2010 it was the democrats. i think what you see the that "new york times" poll is an electorate ready to throw people out again. >> you could end up with a democratic house and a republican president. >> i suggested that to peter hart today, that it -- he said that would be really exceptional. >> it would be exceptional. >> but given the distemper of voters, they are so angry, if you saw the words that they attached in andy kohut's poll after the deal on the debt ceiling, they were ridiculous, offensive, outrageous, childish, stupid. those are the words the voters just volunteered. >> lehrer: do you think this is going to change anything? in other words the polls and the press reaction and the overall public reaction to how
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congress is conducted itself this last several months, is the congress going to change in any way, do you think? >> i doubt it. i think that one of the new truths of american politics is that presidential elections, they create a kind of overhang that goes back months and months and months. and i think basically we have a sort of small window here where the super committee meets and we try and figure out if there's going to be another phase of deficit reduction. and then after that it's just going to be all presidential politics all the time. and i think that that will push both parties, it will give republicans a disincentive -- they already have a disincentive to work with the white house, but it will give them a greater disincentive and it will give the white house an incentive to run against john boehner and much mcconnell. if barack obama could run for president against the congressional republicans in 2012, he would stand a pretty good chance of winning. his problem is that he'll be running against somebody else.
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>> and every incumbent president who seeks re-election, the election is by definition a referendum on that incumbent president. and ross's point is that the white house' strategy will be to say, look, we don't have a particularly litany of successes we can point to, but this other fellow, he didn't return his high braer books, didn't use the revolving door, talked to the bus driver while the bus was no motion, he violated every rule and probably didn't take a breathalyzer test when he was 18 years old. >> but mark, if you're right that the people are angry and upset at everybody, and it continues, the people, the targets of this anger just continue to operate the same way they've been operating, this can't go on for another year, can it? >> no, what you have to have is a sense at some point that somebody is competent in a position of leadership. barack obama is in a position right now, not unlike that of
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bill clinton in 1995. bill clinton emerged from his showdown with the republicans congress then, elevated, as the dominant figure. i don't think, if barack obama emerges from his confrontation with the republican congress, republican house any way, not as an enhanced figure, he looks stronger by contrast. >> this is the core weakness of the obama presidency right now, which is that even if he emerges in slightly better shape than the congressional republicans from these debates, the overall impression that the public is getting is of presidential weakness and inability to manage washington. the whole neary of the obama campaign in 2008 was vote for me, i'm going to change washington, i'm going to make it work again, all the rest of it. and for the average voter who doesn't follow politics that closely, they look at the situation in washington and they think, well, maybe we should put somebody else in charge of it. >> lehrer: one thing we have not talked about is the f.a.a.
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thing, that kind of fell between the cracks when everybody was worry going the debt ceiling debate. that was a terrible thing. >> it was a terrible thing. >> lehrer: it's over, they made a deal. >> they made a deal until september. >> lehrer: i should let you say that. >> it gets you a pass to september. but -- >> lehrer: how can things like that happen? >> well, what happens is you get jurisdictional fights between house and senate, and between individuals, and vanity, and you've got a question of swagger and power, and i'm going to show them. and the idea of doing this and then leaving town, as the republicans, house did in particular, but the senate was ready to do it as well, and leaving 8',000 -- 87,000 people without jobs, and 4,000 people whose responsibility is airline safety, and then you find out
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that we're subsidizing passengers in airports to thousand dollars a ticket, i mean pennsylvania, its entire air service appears to be subsidized by the federal government. >> explain that. >> part of it is sort of an interesting thing that's become clear since the last election. when people think about divided government we usually think about the way it was in the 1990s, where republicans controled the house and senate, democrats controlled the white house, and so on. but part of what's driving dysfunction right now is that it is, as mark says, it's fighting between the house and senate. the house is in republican hands, and they keep passing legislation that is, that democratic senators say, well, that's too right wing or it has a poison -- dead on arrival. then the senate of course it's been an extensive amount of time since the senate last successfully passed a budget. so you have this house and senate back and forth what the mouse isn't peeve en part of, and that's part of what happened with the f.a.a. is it wasn't, it was one house and
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one party's hands, the other house in the other party's hands. >> and the house did something that was really rather remarkable. in order, some people believe the right work is to collective live bargain in terms of employment, the election, in other words whether we're going to be represented by a union or not, they changed the rule that simply a majority of us voting, if there's 50 of us voting and there's 75 of us who are members of this group, and 29 of us vote for it, then we become part of the union. the republicans said no you have to get an absolute majority of all the eligible people. that's what they passed,y fright frankly is anti-democratic in the sense of -- >> lehrer: do you agree with that, ross? >> i think that there's an issue here that comes up again and again between the role of unions in the private sector and the role of unions in the public sector and so on.
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and i think that there's an argument to be made on the republican side on that front, that you're dealing with a different kind of situation there. >> a majority of those voting -- >> well, but then you get in a situation where 10 people vote and you sidly have a union. >> you have to have a quorum. >> lehrer: this is an interesting exchange that you have had about this and we're going to emmitt now. thank you very much. ross, good to see you again. mark. >> thank you, jim. >> brown: finally tonight, the second of two reports on indian surrogate mothers who are paid to bear children for infertile western couples. the money lifts the women out of poverty, but the transactions also raise many ethical issues. special correspondent fred de sam lazaro travelled to western india to explore those issues. the surrogate in this story asked that we not reveal her
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name. >> reporter: minutes after delivering a slightly premature infant by c-section, doctor nayna patel is on the phone to the parents. >> mr. jacob, congratulations, it's a baby girl. where are you, in mumbai right now? >> reporter: they were en route from their home in england and didn't reach the small town of anand, india in time to watch a surrogate mother give birth to their child. >> surrogate is also fine, baby is also fine, we have taken the picture... >> reporter: dr. patel has delivered some 400 surrogate babies since 2004. her clinic develops in-vitro embryos for couples who are unable to carry a baby to term on their own. across india and around the world and pay the surrogates about $7,000 each. kirshner ross-vaden came here from colorado to pick up her
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baby girl named serenity. she was born four weeks premature but after a week in neonatal intensive care, she was ready to be discharged. >> here are your papers. >> reporter: serenity's 46-year- old mother traveled with her nine-year-old son. she had tried unsuccessfully for years to conceive. surrogacy was her last hope and india her first choice. the cost-- $10,000 to $15,000. all told-- is a fraction of what it is in the u.s. and in america, she added surrogacy contracts are not always air- tight >> if that surrogate changes her mind she can sue you for that child and oftentimes she will win. and coming here to india, these women, they don't want my child. it's very cut and dry, they do not want my child.
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they want my money. and that is just fine with me. >> reporter: it's not fine with everyone. >> the contracts are usually written to be blunt to protect the wealthy people who are commissioning the baby so that if the woman suffers an injury, if the woman has a health problem due to childbirth, if there's a long-term chronic condition, then what? >> reporter: university of pennsylvania ethicist arthur caplan worries the relationship is inherently lopsided between poor, minimally literate women and well-heeled couples who commission them to have their children. for example, surrogates in india are routinely implanted with up to five embryos to improve the chances of a pregnancy. in the u.s., clinics usually implant no more than two, sometimes three. >> why would you use three, four, five embryos in india? because you don't want the couple to have to come back. it's expensive, even for a rich person.
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so you're trying to maximize the chance of pregnancy, even if it might compromise the interests of the babies. >> reporter: dr. patel concedes that implanting five embryos heightens the risk for infants and mother and says she is now lowering the number to three or four. but she says the downside of fewer embryos is a lower pregnancy success rate. when multiple embryos develop into viable pregnancies, dr. patel's policy is to reduce them by selective abortion. aside from possible religious concerns, the process could present medical risk to the surviving fetuses. >> parents, yes, there are some who say right from the beginning, doctor put less embryos because we are not for reduction and we don't this to happen. so, in those cases, we never transfer more than two. but there are certain parents who don't have any objection to this. and surrogates, we don't allow them to carry more than two. >> reporter: dr. patel insists that her facility protects the interests of surrogates as much
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as the clients of her commercial surrogacy program and the infants she delivers. >> we do a lot of psychological counseling for the surrogate and the family before we recruit them. we explain to them the procedure of i.v.f., what all they'll have to undergo. if she has any complication with her previous pregnancy we will ask her not to become a surrogate because the same can repeat this time, to make it very sure and safe for her. >> reporter: the moment their pregnancies are confirmed surrogates are required to move into this home run by dr patel. they're offered skills training in things like tailoring but mostly it's a quiet sedentary life. the women who spend nine months in this surrogate hostel have all expienced childbirth with their own biological children. it's a prerequisite for becoming a surrogate. what very few of them have experienced with those previous pregnancies is any kind of prenatal care. that's in sharp contrast to the pampering they get here; meals provided and medical attention,
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should they need it, round the clock. dr. patel acknowledges the irony but says its part of a thorough surveillance to ensure smooth pregnancies for both surrogate and parents sake. >> we have a fetal medicine specialist who checks all the surrogates every three weeks, we have been able to detect minor congenital malformations which we inform the couple can be treated post delivery without any impact on the baby. we have had patients whose surrogates had babies with downs syndrome, which was detected, which was confirmed with amniocentesis and we have aborted those babies after the consent of the couple. >> reporter: well in advance, she says, parents are consulted on decisions like pregnancy termination. similarly parents must accept their babies, once born, whether healthy or not. surrogates we spoke with talked about building a new home and using their money for their children's education. the money, $7,000 to $8,000
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would otherwise take them decades to earn. most say they were happy to have helped infertile couples. the woman who bore baby serenity we met earlier, admitted to some sorrow at her separation. >> you can't help it when you've carried a baby for nine months. id like to see how she does in the future. >> i have her address and would like to keep in touch. >> reporter: we caught up with serenity's mother, in mumbai, about 500 miles from dr. patel's clinic. she and son brandon were holed up in a hotel, awaiting dna test results and myriad documents to satisfy the indian and u.s. governments that the infant could leave the country. >> am i living happily ever after now? i certainly hope so. i hope that i can get her home and i hope that she is a happy
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healthy little baby and that is what i will have, a healthy happy little girl. >> reporter: but will every surrogacy story end happily? right now, india has only voluntary guidelines and it's not clear whether future laws would be adequately enforced. and standards vary widely. for example, dr. patel says she only serves infertile couples. but some clinics offer surrogates to healthy parents who, for career or convenience, want to avoid pregnancy. ethicist caplan worries about where all this is leading. >> we may get into situations where people start to say, as genetic knowledge improves, you know, i'm not infertile, but i'd like to make a baby with traits and properties that i'd like to avoid, or that i desire. that day is coming. i think it's important to keep in mind as we watch the evolution of surrogacy's international activity, what is
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really something that a tiny handful of people use, who suffer from infertility tomorrow can be what more people are interested in because they have a more eugenic, more perfectionist interest in making their children. >> reporter: for her part, dr patel plans a major expansion of her one stop surrogacy shop, a leader in what's now a half billion dollar industry in india. she makes no apologies for making a lucrative living and insists that for her, for surrogates, for new parents, it's win, win, win. >> brown: a version of fred's story can be seen on the pbs program "religion and ethics newsweekly." his reporting is a partnership with the under-told stories project at saint mary's university in minnesota. >> lehrer: again, the major developments of the day: new unemployment figures gave a
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glimmer of hope to the faltering economy. but stocks on wall street had its worst week in more than two years. a federal jury in new orleans convicted five current or former police officers in the killing of a 17-year-old in the days following hurricane katrina. and, thousands of protesters took to the streets across syria, demanding an end to president bashar assad's regime. an editor's note before we go, our guest on the f.a.a. story last night misidentified a congressman.a he's ohio republican steven latourette in his 9th term and a member of the appropriations committee. we regret the error. and to hari sreenivasan for what's on the "newshour" online. hari? >> sreenivasan: paul solman examines today's job numbers through the lens of his solman scale on unemployment. find that on making sense. and two takes on the political fallout from the debt limit deal-- one from judy woodruff and one from gwen ifill. those are on the rundown blog. plus on art beat, jeff talks about the pulitzer prize-winning
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play, "clybourne park," with the artistic director of washington, d.c.'s wooly mammoth theater all that and more is on our web site: newshour.pbs.org. jeff? >> brown: and that's the "newshour" for tonight. on monday, we'll have the latest economic news and an update on the news-corp hacking scandal in britain. i'm jeffrey brown. >> lehrer: and i'm jim lehrer. "washington week" can be seen later this evening on most pbs stations. we'll see you online and again here monday evening. nia ance weekend.k thank you and good night. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> and by the bill and melinda gates foundation. dedicated to the idea that all people deserve the chance to live a healthy productive life. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations.
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