PBS NewsHour | PBS

'OMG! Meiyu' Introduces China to American Slang, Idioms and Jay-Z

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:44:00 EDT

RAY SUAREZ: We'll be hearing a lot next week about ties between the U.S. and China, as that country's vice president visits Washington.

But, for the moment, one of the best-known American women in China is neither a politician nor a Hollywood star.

Hari Sreenivasan has this story about slang.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Millions of Chinese are picking up American slang, thanks to what's happening in this Washington, D.C., apartment.

Meet Jessica Beinecke, China's newest English-language star.

JESSICA BEINECKE, "OMG! Meiyu": My four friends and I are renting a car and driving to New York City. I'm so excited.

(LAUGHTER)

HARI SREENIVASAN: Five days a week, from the comfort of her dining table, the 25-year-old writes, hosts and produces a show called "OMG! Meiyu," or "Oh, My Gosh, American English."

In it, she explains idioms and slang to her Chinese viewers. Beinecke began studying Mandarin as an undergraduate. In 2006, she enrolled in Middlebury College's intensive language program, and spent the first half of 2007 studying in Beijing and Hangzhou, near Shanghai.

JESSICA BEINECKE: I had the best experience studying Mandarin in mainland China, and studying the culture and everything. I feel like it was always me talking to young Chinese people. That was my big goal when I was in China, to make as many friends as I could.

HARI SREENIVASAN: She didn't become a star in China until last August, when she produced a video called "Yucky Gunk."

JESSICA BEINECKE: It was about all the gunk that comes out of your face, and we talked about eye gunk and earwax and boogers.

(LAUGHTER)

JESSICA BEINECKE: You have a -- you have a booger right there.

HARI SREENIVASAN: That video went viral, and has since been viewed more than one-and-a-half million times.

JESSICA BEINECKE: That's never going to be in a textbook. And so they've sort of -- so now they see "OMG! Meiyu" as a place where they can go to get the most authentic American English that young people use.

Jiggly. Jiggly. My arms get jiggly.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Beinecke, or "Bi-jee-eh," as she's known to her Chinese fans, curates six social media accounts in China and the U.S.

JESSICA BEINECKE: It starts on the weekend, where I ask them (SPEAKING MANDARIN), which is, what do you want to study next week? And they -- I get hundreds of responses every week.

HARI SREENIVASAN: "OMG" is becoming a hit in China. On the Chinese equivalent of YouTube, "OMG" has garnered more than seven million views. And on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, the program is now followed by more than 200,000 people.

Beinecke's bosses are taking notice. She works at VOA, Voice of America, the 70-year-old U.S. government-funded broadcaster with programs in more than 40 languages around the world. So why is this working?

DAVID ENSOR, director, Voice of America: She talks to them on their level, and I think that's something we need to replicate around VOA.

HARI SREENIVASAN: David Ensor is Voice of America's director. He says, while "OMG" may not fall within the traditional idea of what VOA does, the show helps the Chinese further understand American culture.

DAVID ENSOR: We are a communications company, multimedia, on many platforms. We're reaching out to various peoples around the world, and our mission is to report the news, yes, but also to explain America and American values to people around the world.

What Jessica is doing is going to be something that I think you'll see more people doing here, which is reaching out to the younger generation in different countries and communicating with them.

HARI SREENIVASAN: But why does it resonate with Chinese audiences?

For some ideas, we visited nearby Georgetown University. There, we asked a group of Chinese nationals and Ph.D. candidates in the linguistics department why Beinecke's show strikes a chord.

HUANG HAI, graduate student, Georgetown University: So first of all, the girl is very cute.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Huang Hai moved to the U.S. in September.

HUANG HAI: One of my friends sent a link to me through China's Weibo, which is China's counterpart of Twitter. Yes, so I know that this video got very popular in China, especially among the teenagers.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Huang Lihong has studied and taught in the U.S. for eight years. She hadn't heard of "OMG," but, as a teacher, could immediately see its value.

HUANG LIHONG, graduate student, Georgetown University: My first impression about her is that she's very energetic and enthusiastic in teaching English. She uses a lot of facial expressions and body language to help the learners learn the language that she is teaching. I think that's very helpful.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Her colleague Luke Amoroso studies English-language instruction in China, and sees obvious benefits of focusing on American slang.

LUKE AMOROSO, graduate student, Georgetown University: It's cool to learn slang. And any language when you learn slang, people like that, because now you're part of the group that knows those things. And that separates you from older people or people that aren't in your group, and that's definitely attractive.

HUANG LIHONG: Her teaching is very interactive and communicative. And it can be a good complement for traditional textbooks, especially for naturalistic learners.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Chinese education has traditionally relied heavily on instructive teaching, lectures and rote memorization. But until recently, the country's closed history has meant it has lacked foreign-born teachers who could add context and authenticity.

HUANG HAI: We Chinese often learn English from very formal classes, and it's like very far from our everyday life.

HUANG LIHONG: The idioms, expressions, slang that she teaches are not easy to find in traditional textbooks. And I think those expressions are very useful in our daily lives.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So what's next for Beinecke and for "OMG"?

JESSICA BEINECKE: It would be ideal if we can start this year inspiring more people to break out of the online community, which is thriving, and it's really exciting, and to go and meet in person, and to be leaders in their community to further the discussion with their friends.

Whether that's in a classroom or that's just with their friends at a KFC around the corner or something like that, I think that would be another dream come true.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Her other dream already came true. In December, she returned to Beijing to meet her fan club, which includes more than 4,000 members, some of whom traveled four hours by train just to meet her.

JESSICA BEINECKE: What do you want for Christmas?

WOMAN: Well, I'm a dog person, so I want a puppy, a husky or a pug.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Those passionate fans also voluntarily built apps for smartphones so "OMG" can be seen on iPhones and Android devices in China and around the world.

For now, Beinecke continues her conversation with Chinese admirers and pupils half a world away.

JEFFREY BROWN: On our website, Jessica Beinecke offers more about how her Chinese audience helps her choose the daily slang words.

Shields, Brooks on Obama's Contraception Compromise, CPAC, Santorum's Big Night

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:33:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JEFFREY BROWN: And now we return to politics with the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen.

Now, a compromise on the birth control health care mandate. Last week, you both decried the administration's stance on this. We heard from a lot of viewers, by the way, who disagreed with both of you. Put aside the debate, the original debate.

Mark, where are we today? What's happening?

MARK SHIELDS: I think we stepped back from the brink. I don't think there is any question about it.

I think those on both sides of the issue -- and there were a few, but they were not unimportant -- who craved and desired a religious war and an all-out fight, I think have been deprived of that.

JEFFREY BROWN: David?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think the administration figured out they made a mistake. This is what they should have done a couple weeks ago. I think Mark and I made this point last week, which is there was a perfectly plausible way which is in existence already in a couple of states to cover the contraception and the other things that are covered by this, but still show respect and deference to the religious views of these Catholic institutions.

And that was always sitting out there. And they chose an absolutist view, which was an insult to a lot of people. And then they realized, okay, this was a political mistake. It was probably substantively unnecessary. And so they made this fudge. And it is a fudge. It's sort of a bit of an accounting gimmick.

It shoves the cost for covering the contraception on to the insurance companies, who presumably will pass it on to somebody in some way. Nonetheless, it's messy. It doesn't make a lot of sense logically, but it shows deference, it shows respect to the people who are out there every day in the neighborhoods doing the work of serving the poor and the needy.

JEFFREY BROWN: At the same time, Mark, we heard the president earlier in the program say that he could claim to hold on to the principle, the key principle of full contraceptive care for all.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. I mean that was, the president made that case today, that he has been consistent.

But there's no question. David is absolutely right. There was a firestorm of protest. And it wasn't just Catholics. It was, I mean, Rick Warren, the pastor at Saddleback Church, bestselling author, who gave the invocation at President Obama's inaugural. I mean, he stood on this issue and said he was 100 percent. And it became one of religious liberty.

As long as you were arguing, Jeffrey, about whether a woman has the right to contraception and that ought to be unfettered, that side carried the issue. But when it became a debate, which it ultimately did, about religious freedom and a rather cramped definition of what a religion can do or should do -- namely, as long as it just took care its own parishioners and did "religious" -- quote -- work, rather than, as David was talking, feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, and taking care of the lonely, the idea that that wasn't religious, I think, really became a problem.

And where it was reflected was when you've got Tim Kaine -- nobody was more important to Barack Obama.

JEFFREY BROWN: A Virginian.

MARK SHIELDS: Former governor of Virginia, then governor of Virginia, an early supporter, strong supporter, and a close personal friend, and a man of unchallenged character, and he is running in the United States Senate race in Virginia this year.

And he broke and criticized the administration on it and said that this was a violation of religious freedom. Bob Casey, the senator from Pennsylvania, who was an early and strong supporter for Barack Obama against Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, where she was strong, he did the same thing, another important state.

I mean, so it became both philosophical and political.

JEFFREY BROWN: But you said we stepped back from the brink.

JEFFREY BROWN: The question is, does this go forward? Does this kind of an -- this issue or this kind of issue carry forward?

DAVID BROOKS: In some respects.

I think a lot of the religious angle will begin to simmer down. I think there will be some people who fight it, but most people, if you look at some of the statements from the Catholic organizations -- these are some Republican senators -- their statements were much more, okay, it's a small step forward.

Where it doesn't die down -- and this -- again, it's not the religious angle. It is the Obamacare. It's the Obama health care angle. It is why -- this plan gives the government a lot more intrusive role into a lot of institutions. So, even in this solution, in this compromise, they're imposing themselves on insurance companies and saying, you will do this, the government telling a private company what they must do.

And so this turns in -- turns back into really an Obama health care plan, which is the debate we've been having for a couple of years, about how intrusive do we want the government to be in telling people and mandating this and that and this and that.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. In the meantime, on the campaign trail, Rick Santorum had a very big night a few days ago, right? Three victories, three states. How did he do it? How important was it?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, he did it as he's done it. He's been a consistent candidate. He's been relentless in his positions.

We talk about both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich being good in their debate performance. He's been consistent and he's been good in his debate performances. And, in addition, he was willing to spend the time of retail politicking, that is, going in and personally campaigning in states that have caucuses. And this is not unimportant.

But do not overlook what this -- this firestorm we were just discussing did to him. I mean two, three weeks ago . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: You think there's a connection?

MARK SHIELDS: Three weeks ago, the political dialogue in the country was income inequality, the economy. Obama is on the offensive. Republicans are divided about extension of the middle-class tax cut.

And what happens in the meanwhile? This issue comes front and fore, a question of life, of religious freedom, of the government overreaching and social and cultural issues replaced. Who has been the tribune of the social and cultural and religious issues? Rick Santorum. It changed the debate.

You could say the Obama people were just incredibly clever, because they dealt a serious blow to Mitt Romney by putting the turf or the . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: That's a new spin on it.

MARK SHIELDS: It is a new spin.

DAVID BROOKS: They got Planned Parenthood involved. They got the court on gay marriage.

DAVID BROOKS: We will call it a big conspiracy.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: I just -- I really do think it was quite an achievement.

JEFFREY BROWN: But do you buy that as the reason, one of the big reasons behind Santorum's...

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah. I don't think it was the sole reason, but it had to contribute. It just elevated his issues. It energized a lot of people.

And the second thing is that Mitt Romney is not so great. And it's his weakness, I think, as much as Rick Santorum's strength, that explains what happened, especially in a state lake Colorado, where he did have a history and did compete.

And the core problem to me is not, is he conservative, are his policies conservative enough? It's not a policy problem, because their policies are all essentially similar. But it's a personal problem. People know that, if Rick Santorum, if he -- if he was not running for president, he was in a room and you asked him about his positions, he would say exactly what he is saying. People do not believe that about Mitt Romney.

JEFFREY BROWN: So you are saying this is more of an anti-Romney . . .

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's significantly and maybe -- probably mostly an anti-Romney thing.

DAVID BROOKS: So it's a sign of his weakness that people don't know where he comes from. He doesn't talk about his past. And I think he should break the Mormon taboo and talk about it. Talk about his past. Talk about his family past.

I think he needs to tell the country -- and he sells himself as the turnaround artist. Well, what does that mean to most people? What community is he from. What business -- what industry does he really know? It sounds like he's sort of a free agent floating out there.

So people don't know where this guy comes from. And he really hasn't filled people in because he wants to be reticent about his own personal past. And I think that is a core problem that he has to address.

MARK SHIELDS: We have two core problems.

I mean I think Romney's problem was best captured by Tom Toles, the cartoonist of The Washington Post, in which Mitt Romney is sitting in an elephant's lap, and the elephant is dressed in a Santa Claus suit. And he says to him, "What do you want me to ask for?"

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, that's really what it is like.

I mean you're dying for Mitt Romney to come in and tell any audience what it doesn't want to hear, I mean, just once. I mean, I don't care who it is. I mean, but just go in and say, no, I am not going to be able to do that for you because I will tell you why. I think there is a larger national interest.

And I think that is a real problem. He went to CPAC today. And . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: There was the audience today, right, a very conservative audience.

MARK SHIELDS: There was no emotional connection.

And it was -- he was -- you know, the words were there, but the music was missing, or whatever, however you want to phrase it. It just isn't convincing. And I don't know if you let Romney be Romney, whatever it is, but they -- he's won, he crushed Newt Gingrich by negative commercials.

Now they're saying, the Romney campaign, we have more money. We've got more offices. We have got more people in our campaign staff and we will go after Rick Santorum.

And it makes you want to reach for the Listerine or the Scope, because it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. He's got to make the case on why he wants to be president, not why his opponents shouldn't be.

JEFFREY BROWN: At that CPAC meeting, of course, all three of them were there, all trying to claim the mantle, right, of most conservative.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. And Santorum at this point is probably the most dear to the heart of people in that room. It is a pretty conservative group.

The odd thing about Romney is they know all the problems. They have got a slogan in the Boston campaign headquarters: You've got to be willing to lose in order to win.

And that's absolutely true of politics. You have to believe in something deeper before people will trust you. And yet that hasn't been manifested. And the thing to look ahead, if we are looking ahead, is the Michigan primary I think in two weeks or so, because that is a state where he has nominal family roots, obviously. And yet Santorum is not so far behind.

And I suspect that is where Santorum is going to contest. And right now, you still have to consider Romney the frontrunner, though it is true that Santorum has won four primaries and he has only won two. But if he doesn't win the Michigan, then I think the party becomes really hysterical.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, what is your sense of the conservative voters? At a meeting like this one, where there are very strong conservatives, they're listening for all three. What are they looking for and what are they waiting for?

DAVID BROOKS: They're looking for conviction.

The idea is, you are going to go to Washington, a place they distrust. There are going to be all these forces against you telling you not do what you promised to do. Do you have the internal mettle to do it anyway? And they trust that about Rick Santorum. I'm not sure they trust it about Romney, which is not to say his positions aren't right. It is a question, do you have the inner steel?

JEFFREY BROWN: You were there today. So what is your sense?

MARK SHIELDS: No, I just sense that there isn't an emotional connection.

It reminds me of a focus group that Peter Hart, the respected Democratic pollster, did of 12 voters about President Obama. And they asked, what is his spine made of? And the first person said steel, metal. Then it was plastic and wood and bamboo. And, you know, I think that is really a question that people ask about their president. It is a question that people are asking after going through this most recent experience with the president.

But I think it's one that -- with Romney, it is just central to his public identity. Who is he? What does he stand for? What is he willing to give up to lose? What is he willing to risk to lose? And that's -- I mean, at some point, addition does develop by subtraction, that you are willing to write off either some constituency just because of conviction.

And I think that is the question about him. Is he a conviction politician in a group, CPAC, particularly, who are conviction political activists?

JEFFREY BROWN: And you -- just briefly, in our 30 seconds here, back to the president in all this, he's trying to hope that the conversation switches back to the economy . . .

DAVID BROOKS: Right. And he's . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: . . . which is funny after all the talk we've had about the bad economy for a long time.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. And he's, by the way, doing quite well in the polls. There is a poll out, which I think is probably an outlier poll, which had him beating Romney by 10 points. That can't possibly be.

But, nonetheless, yes, there is no question he has had a good period. And if he got Rick Santorum to run again against him, he'd be extremely happy.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, David Brooks, Mark Shields, thanks a lot.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you, Jeff.

Italy: Amid Eurozone Crisis, 'Going the Greece Way' Would Be Disastrous

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:22:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JEFFREY BROWN: Now to Italy. Like Greece, it's under pressure from international creditors to bring down its massive national debt. But its economy is so big that an Italian default could bring about the collapse of the entire euro system.

Margaret Warner wraps up two weeks of reporting on the European debt story with this report from northern Italy on a country confronting the threats to its economy and much more.

MARGARET WARNER: Long before models float down the runways in Milan, fashion designers flock here, the biannual Milan textile fair. But this year's display of fabric, bolts and buyers belies the fact that this cornerstone of Italian industry is struggling.

Third-generation thread-maker Roberto Belloli says Italian materials, design and craftsmanship are in a dogfight, competing globally against cheaper goods, and using the euro means Italy can't devalue to compete on price, as it did in the days of the lira.

And now there's another threat, the eurozone crisis. Belloli has to turn away longtime customers at home and abroad because they're short of cash for credit.

ROBERTO BELLOLI, CEO, Antonio Aspesi, SRL: We had a good company with some customers in Greece. And, in this moment, it's not possible to work with them, for example, or in Spain, or in Portugal, because, in this moment, they have no credit. So we had to reduce this company. So, we cannot work with them.

MARGARET WARNER: All of Italy is hurting, from the fashion and financial hub of Milan to the country's many small towns, business is bad.

GIULIO COTI ZELATI, cafe owner (through translator): Earnings have changed. What's in the drawer at the end of the day, it is very easy to work a lot and earn very little.

MARGARET WARNER: We came from Germany to the prosperous north Italian region of Lombardy to see why Italy's economy is losing ground. The stakes here are enormous. Europe's second most indebted country after Greece, Italy's too big to bail out. But, as the world's seventh largest economy, it's too big to fail.

TITO BOERI, Bocconi University: The increasing Italian public debt occurred mostly in the '80s, beginning of the '90s.

Economist Tito Boeri, a professor at Bocconi University, says Italy incurred the debt through government giveaways two decades ago. But its biggest problem in tackling the debt now is the last 10-plus years of stagnant growth.

TITO BOERI: The income per capita, so the average income of an Italian is now in 2012 at the level of 1999. The reason behind this is structural, but what we call structural problems, structured impediments to growth.

MARGARET WARNER: That was clear during a visit to Italy's Lake District. Known for its alpine views, it's also home to an age-old manufacturing sector.

ARISTIDE STUCCHI, CEO, AAG Stucchi: We are very family-oriented people. And we are very attached to the ground where we are born.

MARGARET WARNER: Aristide Stucchi owns a lighting component firm founded by his grandfather. He feels hamstrung by a labor law that makes it extremely hard for most companies to fire a worker.

ARISTIDE STUCCHI: If the judge do not think that the reason to fire him was good, you must re-put him in place and pay him the salary of up to 60 months.

MARGARET WARNER: You go to court. How long does that whole process take?

ARISTIDE STUCCHI: A life. A life, yes.

MARGARET WARNER: But does that inhibit you in any way from hiring?

ARISTIDE STUCCHI: Yeah, that's the biggest problem now, probably, that companies think twice to hire somebody.

MARGARET WARNER: Just up the road is a family-run chain-making company. Its owner, Giovanni Maggi, feels held back by a swollen and unresponsive Italian bureaucracy.

GIOVANNI MAGGI, CEO, Maggi Group: The bureaucracy, which has a very negative effect in the economy in Italy, gave us a lot of problems, so we need a lot of permission.

MARGARET WARNER: Permitting hassles long delayed his plans to build this simple warehouse across the parking lot.

GIOVANNI MAGGI: In the last two years, nowadays, it's not possible because we are in a global market, with competition from all the world, and we must be very fast in reaction.

MARGARET WARNER: And then there is Italy's high rate of corporate taxation. Combined taxes can run more than 50 percent. Stucchi and Maggi argue that's one reason Italian companies aren't as efficient as some foreign competitors. It also leads to tax evasion.

The reasons for the Italian sport of tax dodging has even deeper roots, Maggi says.

GIOVANNI MAGGI: I think maybe it was, you know, in the mentality of the Italians. I think that most of the Italians, they don't believe the state, and most of the Italians, I'd say they like in their DNA that do not pay taxes. But this one doesn't work, I think. So we must pay taxes if we want that our country will be able to survive.

MARGARET WARNER: Economist Boeri says the underground economy is so pervasive, an estimated 30 percent of total output, that it spawned its own vocabulary.

TITO BOERI: We have the black economy and the cappuccino economy. The cappuccino is . . .

MARGARET WARNER: What's the cappuccino economy?

TITO BOERI: The cappuccino is with some milk. No, it is a color that is less black.

MARGARET WARNER: So a restaurant might declare some of its receipts, but not all?

TITO BOERI: Exactly. This would be a cappuccino type of situation.

MARGARET WARNER: Italy's stalled economy has been devastating for many ordinary Italians. Most young people aren't hired full-time these days, but under short-term contracts, giving employers little incentive to train them.

Thirty-three-year-old architect Francesco Leoncavallo juggles two jobs, just one in his field.

FRANCESCO LEONCAVALLO, architect: No contracts.

MARGARET WARNER: No contracts at all?

FRANCESCO LEONCAVALLO: No.

(through translator): In the evenings, I do a job which has no reference to what I studied.

MARGARET WARNER: And there are lots of newly poor.

The Caritas Catholic charity in Vimercate near Milan used to care mostly for immigrants. Now an increasing number seeking help are proud Italians, like pensioner Piera Raffaglio, who says her son and son-in-law both lost their jobs.

PIERA RAFFAGLIO, pensioner (through translator): My situation today is a disaster. There is more than one reason for it. Number one, the euro currency which entered Europe, it has made everything cost more.

MARGARET WARNER: Is it hard for to you come here?

Piuccia Piorola, who's run the center since it opened in 2000, says native-born Italians used to be just 3 percent of its cases. Now they're 35 percent.

PIUCCIA PIOROLA, director, Caritas of Vimercate (through translator): The problems affecting the families are unemployment, income and housing, but also family problems, conflicts, separations, single mothers. He or she who is poor always has other problems, too.

MARGARET WARNER: Yet, it was only last summer, as the global bond market started hammering Italy's interest rates, that Italians were forced to confront the trouble they were in. Under pressure from the markets and European Union leaders, like Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigned and was replaced by unelected economist Mario Monti.

BEPPE SEVERGNINI, journalist: We decided that in an emergency we would need to rush to Dr. Monti emergency room, and that we could not fool around all night with good old Silvio and his people and his colorful entourage. And please note my understatement.

MARGARET WARNER: Italian journalists and author Beppe Severgnini says many Italians deep down welcomed intervention by their northern neighbors.

BEPPE SEVERGNINI: The reality was, we were going down the drain, down the -- we're going the Greece way. And that would be a disaster for us and for the rest of Europe and I think for the rest of the world.

MARGARET WARNER: In three months, Monti has pushed through spending cults, a hike in the retirement age and renewed taxes on primary residences. But there is resistance to his attempts to liberalize the economy from the grip of guilds that limit numbers and set minimum prices for pharmacists, lawyers, notaries and taxies.

Cabdriver Antonio Costa says he will have to work more for less money if more cabs hit the streets, while tax hikes have raised gas prices. He faults E.U. leaders for pressuring Monti without giving him much of a helping hand.

ANTONIO COSTA, cab driver (through translator): I believe Merkel could have done more for us economically, for example, euro bonds, which she refused to do and she should have. But Germany is the most powerful force. They hold the knife by the handle, so they can decide whether we have good weather or bad weather.

MARGARET WARNER: Are the Germans trying to dictate to Europe?

ANTONIO COSTA (through translator): Certainly. No doubt about it.

MARGARET WARNER: Polls show a majority of Italians, like consumer goods company manager Andrea Rendina, approve of what Monti's doing.

Do you think he's going to succeed?

ANDREA RENDINA, company manager: Provided he has the opportunity to continue working, yes, he will. Hopefully, he can do it, because, eventually, we have expert people at the right place.

BEPPE SEVERGNINI: The Italians have changed more in the last six months then they have in the last 15, 20 years. But Italy is an operatic country. Never forget that. And the crowd in the theater, they cheer the tenor until the very moment until they boo him off the stage.

MARGARET WARNER: Yet, with so much at stake, says Beppe Severgnini, perhaps bravos won't give way to boos too quickly this time.

BEPPE SEVERGNINI: Deep down, we know that is the only way to do things. Work longer. Do not waste money. Pay your taxes.

If we do that, then Italy is paradise. So, everything else is right. Look at a place like this. Look at a town like this. Look the food, the wine, the families we have. We have got everything all right.

MARGARET WARNER: All right indeed, but if Italians want to preserve the way of life they cherish, they are first going have to save it.

Greece Reels as Government OKs More Austerity Measures

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:20:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JEFFREY BROWN: And we turn to the European debt crisis in two parts.

The Greek government has signed off on a new round of austerity measures in exchange for another bailout. But European finance ministers say that may not be enough.

We begin with a report from Athens from James Mates of Independent Television News.

JAMES MATES: They thought they'd done what was required of them, passing another round of cuts to jobs, wages, and pensions, only to be told by the rest of the euro zone, that's not good enough.

The result was fury in Athens' central square. Through the trees, policemen, whose wages have been cut under the austerity package, are hit by petrol bombs. Six ministers have already had enough, resigning today from the government. The leader of the smallest of the three parties in the coalition has now withdrawn his support.

"I will not vote for more austerity," he told a news conference, amid complaints of being trampled by German boots.

That was a theme taken up by one paper here, who put German Chancellor Angela Merkel on its front page in Nazi uniform. That is how strong passions are running.

MAN: I don't want to leave my country, but I don't have a future here.

MAN: They have to vote, but not with a gun on their head.

JAMES MATES: The man holding that gun is the chairman of the countries that use the euro, and he's not loosening the purse strings.

JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER, Eurogroup: We cannot live with a system where promises are made and repeated and repeated, and where the implementation measures are from time to time too weak. So we are insisting on a real, true implementation.

JAMES MATES: And a vote in parliament, possibly as early as Sunday, that will attract another huge demonstration, it may make today's protests look like nothing more than a warm-up.

News Wrap: Romney, Santorum Pitch Conservative Values at CPAC

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:14:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

HARI SREENIVASAN: The battle for conservative hearts and minds brought Republican presidential hopefuls to Washington today. At an annual conference, Mitt Romney tried to allay doubts about where he stands, and defended his time as governor of Massachusetts.

MITT ROMNEY (R): I fought against long odds in a deep blue state. But I was a severely conservative Republican governor.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

MITT ROMNEY: I understand that -- the battles we, as conservatives, must fight because I have been on the front lines, and expect to be on those front lines again.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum never mentioned Romney directly, but he argued he is the only candidate in the field who will stay true to conservative values.

RICK SANTORUM (R): Why would an undecided voter vote for a candidate of a party who the party's not excited about?

(LAUGHTER)

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

RICK SANTORUM: We need conservatives now to rally for a conservative to go into November, to excite the conservative base.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Romney suffered a setback this week when Santorum won contests in three states. Tomorrow, caucus results will be announced in Maine.

In Syria, at least 28 people were killed in a pair of suicide car bombings. The attackers hit security compounds in the northern city of Aleppo, an area that had been relatively calm until now.

We have a report from Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News, reporting from neighboring Lebanon.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Who bombed Aleppo? The Syrian government says it was terrorists. The rebel Free Syrian Army told us they didn't do it. The government, they say, planted the bombs to tarnish the opposition and distract the world from the attacks on other Syrian cities.

It didn't stop some residents of Aleppo coming out to demonstrate. "Free Syrian Army, may God protect you," they chanted. Security forces shot into the crowd, forcing them to scatter. In Homs to the south, there was no letup in the shelling.

Rocket and mortar fire was coming in constantly. Tanks are firing into the Baba Amr district, where thousands of civilians are trapped. Activists say several children were killed this morning in Baba Amr. Yet, in the suburb of Khalidiya, people came out to protest on the streets as they do every Friday. They set fire to the Russian flag.

The Russian veto of last Saturday's U.N. Security Council resolution is seen as Assad's license to kill. They have the support of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who rarely speaks out like this in public.

KING ABDULLAH BIN ABDUL-AZIZ AL SAUD, Saudi Arabia (through translator): We are in frightening days. And, regrettably, what happened at the United Nations, in my opinion, is an unfavorable move. The confidence of the whole world in the U.N. is undoubtedly shaken.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Today, there was even a small demonstration in Esali, a suburb in the center of the capital, Damascus. Hundreds have been killed in Syria this week, but it's not quelled the uprising.

HARI SREENIVASAN: In Washington, the State Department said it has information that some in the Syrian elite are trying to get their money and families out of the country.

On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 89 points to close at 12,801. The Nasdaq fell 23 points to close below 2,904. For the week, the Dow and the Nasdaq lost about half a percent.

The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus, confirmed today he's being investigated by an ethics panel over alleged insider trading. The Washington Post reported today that the Office of Congressional Ethics began its investigation after a CBS "60 Minutes"' expose' last fall. Bachus, an Alabama Republican, said he is cooperating and expects to be fully exonerated.

Both the House and Senate have now passed bills barring lawmakers and White House officials from insider trading.

Those are some of the day's major stories.

Sebelius Explains White House's Contraception Compromise

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:03:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JEFFREY BROWN: President Obama backtracked some today on a birth control insurance mandate. His new plan sought to satisfy critics of the plan, while maintaining support from women's health advocates.

The president entered the White House Briefing Room bent on calming a political storm.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Religious liberty will be protected, and a law that requires free preventive care will not discriminate against women.

JEFFREY BROWN: Just three weeks ago, the administration announced that religiously affiliated schools, hospitals and other institutions had to cover birth control free of cost. Roman Catholic officials, in particular, charged the mandate would force them to violate their own teachings.

Today, the president said the revised plan would address that objection.

BARACK OBAMA: Under the rule women will still have access to free, preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where they work. So that core principle remains.

But if a woman's employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company -- not the hospital, not the charity -- will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge without co-pays and without hassles.

JEFFREY BROWN: The president of the Catholic Health Association, representing Catholic hospitals, welcomed the decision.

Sister Carol Keehan said in a statement, "The framework developed has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed."

The head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was more restrained. Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan said, "Today's decision to revise how individuals obtain services that are morally objectionable to religious entities and people of faith is a first step in the right direction."

Groups that supported the birth control mandate, from Planned Parenthood to the National Organization for Women, backed the compromise.

Louise Melling is deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union.

LOUISE MELLING, American Civil Liberties Union: We were pleased that, today, the Obama administration made perfectly clear its longstanding commitment to contraceptive coverage, that it made clear, again, and reaffirmed its commitment to ensure that women across the country, no matter where they work, will be able to have coverage for contraception.

JEFFREY BROWN: For their part, Republican presidential candidates kept up their criticism of the original mandate.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich spoke at a gathering of conservative activists in Washington.

NEWT GINGRICH (R): Our core document says we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. And Barack Obama seeks to cut across those.

And I, frankly, don't care what deal he tries to cut, this is a man who is deeply committed -- if he wins reelection, he will wage war on the Catholic Church the morning after he's reelected. We cannot trust him, we should -- we know who he really is, and we should make sure the country knows who he really is.

(APPLAUSE)

JEFFREY BROWN: At that same conference, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum accused the administration of overreach. He spoke shortly before the president's remarks.

RICK SANTORUM (R): This is the kind of coercion that we can expect. It's not about contraception. It's about economic liberty. It's about freedom of speech. It's about freedom of religion. It's about government control of your lives. And it's got to stop.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

JEFFREY BROWN: Mitt Romney didn't directly respond to the Obama announcement, but he vowed that his would be a pro-life presidency.

MITT ROMNEY (R): And I will reverse every single Obama regulation that attacks our religious liberty and threatens innocent life in this country.

JEFFREY BROWN: The president today suggested the political uproar should die down now that the policy has changed.

BARACK OBAMA: I understand some folks in Washington may want to treat this as another political wedge issue, but it shouldn't be. I certainly never saw it that way.

This is an issue where people of good will on both sides of the debate have been sorting through some very complicated questions to find a solution that works for everyone. With today's announcement, we've done that.

JEFFREY BROWN: With the president hoping to put the birth control furor behind him, aides will be watching to see if Republicans in Congress push ahead with emergency legislation on the issue.

RAY SUAREZ: This afternoon, I spoke about the president's decision with Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. She spoke from the front lawn of the White House, where construction has been under way for more than a year, work that resumed during our interview.

Secretary Sebelius, welcome back to the NewsHour.

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Thank you. Nice to be with you, Ray.

RAY SUAREZ: Could the administration have avoided a damaging fight over contraception coverage by announcing this policy in the first place?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Well, I think what people missed is that the announcement that I made two weeks ago suggested that we were moving ahead with the exemption that had been originally drafted, but, also, we would spend time reaching out to stakeholders, to religious employers who objected to offering this coverage, and we would spend a year finding arrangements that both respected their religious liberty, but made sure at the end of the day that women employees of these institutions, whether she was a university professor or a nurse or a janitor, could make their own determination about very important preventive health care.

RAY SUAREZ: Did you have any idea what was coming? Were you warned by administration colleagues about possible backlash?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Well, there were certainly people who felt we should broaden the exemption greatly.

I think the president from the outset determined that he was not willing to have millions of American women bear the financial burden of their employer deciding they should not access contraception, a drug that is the most frequently used prescription drug of women 14 to 40, and that often has a serious financial cost, up to $600 if a woman is paying out of pocket for it.

So, on one hand, we wanted to make sure that the preventive health benefits, no co-pays, no co-insurance applied to the whole range of IOM recommendations, so keep the exemption narrow, for churches and church affiliates, but also use the time to look at the 28 states which have mandatory contraceptive coverage, see what arrangements were satisfactory to the various Catholic institutions who right now offer that coverage, universities and hospitals, and deem that to be effective going forward.

When the firestorm broke out, the president basically said, we have got to speed up this process. Let's find a solution respecting religious liberty and guaranteeing that millions of women in America, and really all women in America now, have insurance policies that will have a range of health services needed by them and their families without co-pays and co-insurance to make sure they can access them.

RAY SUAREZ: So, you mentioned the administration spoke to religious institutions beforehand. Have you spoken to them about this latest adjustment, this latest change of policy?

It's reported that President Obama has already spoken to Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, one of the senior leaders of the Catholic Church.

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Well, I don't -- I know he has reached out to Archbishop Dolan. I know he has spoken to Sister Carol Keehan from the Catholic Health Association, who has issued a statement very supportive of this rule that we're going to publish in the federal register today.

I know he has spoken to Cecile Richards from Planned Parenthood, who was also very supportive of the rules we put out today. We are going to be -- again, as we develop the specifics around this regulation, work with insurance companies, work with institutions.

But I think this does exactly what the president asked us to do, which is make sure that millions of women, regardless of who their employer is, can make their own health decisions, have access to this full range of very important preventive health services, as recommended by the Institute of Medicine, and at the same time respect the religious liberty of their employers who may object to either paying for or directly offering this coverage.

RAY SUAREZ: Secretary, can we talk about mechanics? If you've just taken a new job at a religiously based hospital or university, your employee paperwork is silent on reproductive health care, what happens next?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Well, typically, if you are a new employee and in an insured plan, the insurance company or the variety of insurance companies are the ones who actually publish the benefit package.

So, in this case, again, the insurance company would be reaching out to employees, making it clear that it is their choice whether to access contraceptive benefits. And what we know, Ray, is that actually this is a no-cost benefit, that the National Business Council on Health, that our actuaries, a variety of people in group plans say having contraception as part of a group insurance plan actually lowers the overall cost, doesn't increase it, because, on balance, preventive services around family planning, avoiding what may be unhealthy pregnancies, avoiding the health consequences of that actually is a cost reducer.

So we have a situation where the insurance companies directly offer this benefit to the women employees, and the religious employer doesn't pay for it, doesn't refer to it, and doesn't have to offer it.

RAY SUAREZ: You say money from the religious institutions doesn't pay for this, but isn't money fungible?

If a Catholic nonprofit is paying for your insurance coverage, isn't it paying for contraception if you are getting the coverage through that same insurer?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Well, again, Ray, in this case, actuaries have looked at this benefit.

The federal employees health plan, when contraception was added to federal employees' benefit, which is the largest employee group in the country, costed this as no cost, free, no cost, because adding contraception and having some employees take advantage of that coverage lowers the overall cost of the health plan.

So we have that in place around the country. We have actuaries that have inserted that, and so we're not -- this isn't a shell game of passing the costs along. This is a real no-cost option that is, according to the National Business Council on Health, could reduce an insurance plan by about 15 percent. We're not counting on that.

But I think we can say very safely that this doesn't add to the cost of either the employer's plan -- and we know that women, if they have to purchase this coverage outside of a health plan, could spend up to $600, which is a substantial financial barrier to access a very important health benefit and a benefit used by 99 percent of women across this country at some point in their lives.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you've transferred the administrative burden to insurance companies. Are insurers ready to pay? Have they signed on?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: We will be doing just that.

But as part of the Affordable Care Act, our department will define the rules under which we offer these benefits. And we're confident that this works and that insurers are prepared to step up and do this. Again, this is in place in many states in the country right now, where there is an insurance company providing benefits to employees, and the employer not directly offering those benefits.

RAY SUAREZ: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Madam Secretary, thanks for joining us.

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Great to be with you, Ray.

'OMG!' Exports American Slang to China

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:01:00 EDT

Watch Video

Meet Jessica Beinecke, the writer, host and producer of "OMG! Meiyu," or "Oh My Gosh! American English." Each weekday the 25-year-old Voice of America journalist posts 2- to 3-minute videos explaining the hippest American English and culture to a Chinese audience; her many Chinese fans, in turn, tell her what they'd like to learn next.

But the show originated as an afterthought. Last July, she and her colleagues at VOA "were producing a monthly travel show that went around the country showing the coolest places in America, the most interesting American people and teaching American slang along the way," Beinecke said. "But we thought, this isn't online, this is only monthly, so are people seeing this? We had no idea."

With some advice from the producers of "Parazit," a popular show on VOA's Persian service profiled last year on the NewsHour, she created "OMG! Meiyu." And seven months later, her show now has more than 7 million hits on Youku, the Chinese equivalent to YouTube, and receives hundreds of suggestions each week for new lessons.

"So it's really fan-driven content, and it deepens the connection that they have with 'OMG Meiyu' because they feel like they're contributing. They feel like they're creating the show," Beinecke said.

In the video above, Beinecke explains how she forms her lesson plans, fosters dialogue with her fans and ensures she's continuing to deliver what Chinese audiences want.

On Friday's NewsHour broadcast, Hari Sreenivasan spoke with Beinecke about her show.

Watch Video

Follow Hari on Twitter, Like him on Facebook, Circle him on Google Plus.

Siege of Homs Grinds On: 'There Is a Sniper at the End of Our Street'

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:06:00 EDT

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's army continues to blast away at the city of Homs and on Thursday we spoke with someone living in the middle of the conflict.

Lubna, a 27-year-old woman who wished to be identified only by her first name, lives just a few blocks from Homs' clock-tower, near the city center. For five days, she didn't leave her house because of the sounds of gunfire and explosions. On Thursday she ventured into her neighborhood for the first time all week. We spoke with her shortly after she returned home.

Lubna told us that she lives in between Baba Amr and Al Khalidiya, two neighborhoods that activists say have been under near-constant attack by mortars and bombs.

This video, purportedly shot in Baba Amr, was uploaded to YouTube a few hours after we spoke with Lubna. The sporadic gunfire heard in the background has been a constant on some of the live video feeds of the town, archived here.

Lubna's neighborhood can be seen on this conflict map of Homs created by the BBC. She said she lives to the left of the section marked Old City.

Earlier this week, we spoke to an activist in Homs who described the increasing violence.

View all of our World coverage and follow us on Twitter.

Election 2012: Managing Alternatives

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EDT

Updated 5:30 p.m. Friday | One of the things we tell our children is that life is all about choices.

We celebrate this idea, because it is an essential part of the kind of ambition we want them to have. We want them to consider all the options, and then aspire to the best one.

In politics, the language of choice often comes loaded. School choice. Abortion rights. Public option. Proponents embrace these descriptions to put the best possible face on otherwise contentious issues.

This was one of the weeks where the politics of alternatives defined the debate. President Obama ended his week by pulling a compromise out of his hat on coverage for women's health care that sparked a surprisingly fierce pushback from the Catholic Church.

Should individuals pay for contraception? Should employers who object to birth control be required to pay? The tightrope solution from the White House -- make insurance companies pay. President Obama's decision to abandon his opposition to big-money super PACS was another painfully studied choice, since the president was on record in opposition to such spending.

Obama 2012 manager Jim Messina admitted as much in a campaign blog post.

"With so much at stake, we can't allow for two sets of rules in this election whereby the Republican nominee is the beneficiary of unlimited spending and Democrats unilaterally disarm," he wrote. The alternative, he suggested, was forced on them.

For GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, who saw his march toward the Republican nomination slowed by a trio of primary season losses, the week's choice was more of a pivot.

With good news building on the economic front, it was becoming more difficult (but not impossible) to fault the incumbent president's handling of the economy. Then Rick Santorum clocked him in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado, and Romney was left with little choice but to start speaking to the social conservatives who seem immune to his charms.

The Obama administration handed the Republicans a handy assist on this. The alternatives in this case were balancing its commitment to contraceptive coverage for women in the president's health care plan against the anger this stirred up among Catholic bishops who said mandating contraceptive coverage forced them to violate their own beliefs.

As this controversy - and an earlier one involving contributions to Planned Parenthood from the Susan G. Komen Foundation - blew up, the culture wars promptly replaced the economic debates on the nation's front pages. So Romney got on board.

House Speaker John Boehner called the contraceptive coverage provision an "unambiguous attack on our religious freedom in this country" and the White House frantically signaled it would find a way to work something out. By then, the red meat was already on the table.

The search for alternatives does not end at the Washington beltway. A federal appeals court panel demonstrated that this week when it issued a narrowly tailored ruling allowing California -- and only California -- to allow same-sex marriages. Opponents of Proposition 8 -- which banned same-sex marriage -- were elated, but were also left deeply nervous about whether a likely Supreme Court challenge would ultimately forbid gay marriage in all 50 states, instead of just one. Those are the alternatives.

The choices play out in every direction, including in the federal government. This week, the White House and Congress competed to see which unpopular branch of government could engineer passage of the greatest number of incremental solutions -- whether by forbidding insider-trading for lawmakers or rescuing homeowners who owe more on their homes than the homes are worth.

For voters on the left and the right, the alternatives -- and the choices to be made -- become more basic. Do they choose electability or enthusiasm?

For Democrats, that means coming to grips with the idea of re-electing an incumbent they may not always agree with.

And for Republicans, it's about deciding when and whether to choose a nominee who can beat that incumbent - even if he does not make the heart pound.

Try explaining that to the children.

Gwen's Take is cross-posted with the website of Washington Week, which airs Friday night on many PBS stations. Check your local listings.

Schools Look to Holistic Approach to Improve Attendance

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:45:00 EDT

Photo by Max Wolfe via Creative Commons

When it comes to lowering the high school dropout rate, many school leaders have found that something fairly basic works: the ABCs -- Attendance, Behavior and Class.

And after President Obama's call-to-action to raise the legal dropout rate to 18 in this year's State of the Union, communities across the country are looking at their own attempts to crack down on poor attendance and searching for the most effective strategies.

In Washington, D.C., where 20 percent of students miss 15 or more days of school each year, parents and students soon will see individual success stories advertised on bus shelters, each sharing their own inspiration for good attendance. A radio commercial targeting parents also will be aired on local stations.

The strategy is the result of a truancy task force created by health and family services and law enforcement agencies.

While it is too early to tell if this campaign, which costs between $500,000 and $700,000 according to the Washington City Paper, will work for Washington, D.C., the multi-agency approach already has proven successful elsewhere in the country.

A recent report by the Los Angeles-based School Attendance Task Force shows that Alhambra Unified School District in California reduced its truancies by 61 percent within two years of implementing a program that provided mental health resources to help students cope academically and socially.

"I don't have any expectations that we'll plop down this report and everyone will say, 'yay, hooray, let's do it all,'" said Education Coordinating Council vice chairman Michael Nash, according to a KPCC report. "You hope some of this will resonate with school districts and they'll think we could do this, we could do that, and they'll do what they can."

Communities also are reevaluating discipline policies, which in some cases have led to less time in the classroom and more time in the criminal justice system, exacerbating the dropout problem.

In Atlanta, courts now have more disciplinary options for parents whose children have been caught breaking daytime curfew hours. Instead of criminalizing these offenses with jail time, courts have the option of sending parents to counseling and parenting classes or community service.

"The goal of this ordinance is not to put parents in jail or to administer fines," said Atlanta City Council President Ceasar C. Mitchell, quoted an Atlanta Journal Constitution report. "Those are the methods of last resort."

Still, the reasons why students don't make it to school are many: family problems, teen pregnancy, bullying, work obligations or simply being bored in the classroom.

Rebecca Lara, a senior at Cardozo High School in Washington, D.C., and one of the students featured in the district's anti-truancy campaign, said it comes down to waking up earlier and putting in the effort.

When students miss school, it impacts others as well. "We've got a lesson. Children don't come back. We have to repeat the lesson again because they've missed it," said teacher Nina Barre in New Orleans' Recovery School District in a 2009 NewsHour report. "They're getting the same lesson over and over again. They can't move on."

Watch the video below:

Watch Video

American Graduate is a public media initiative focused on the high school dropout problem.

Follow @newshouramgrad

Conversation: Pianist Jonathan Biss

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:55:00 EDT

Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas remain landmarks in music history, works that pianists in every generation have felt the desire, the inspiration, the need to take on.

A new recording by Jonathan Biss is recently out, the first of nine to be released over nine years, that will eventually include the entire cycle. Biss has also written a long essay about the project, titled "Beethoven's Shadow," which was released in Amazon's Kindle Singles series.

I spoke to Biss last week:

EmbedVideo(2677, 514, 320);

A transcript will be posted soon.

After Uproar, Obama Revises Contraception Rule

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:46:00 EDT

Under mounting pressure, the Obama administration today proposed an "accommodation" to a mandate that religious groups cover birth control free-of-charge.

President Obama made the announcement this afternoon in the White House Press room.

The new plan allows employers with religious objections to offering contraceptive coverage to turn the responsibility over to their health insurance company. Those insurers will be able to offer contraceptive coverage directly to employees without co-pays or other charges.

The original mandate issued last month drew sharp criticism from many Catholics, conservatives and even some Democrats, who argued that it was a violation of religious freedom. Churches, mosques and synagogues were exempt -- but other religious institutions that serve and employ people of other faiths were not eligible for exemption.

The new rule grew out of a report by the Institute of Medicine last year that recommended an expansion of birth control services to women as part of the health reform law. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a ruling that contraception should be provided free-of-charge as an "essential health benefit" in their insurance coverage.

The initial reaction to today's changes seemed to satisfy some key players on both sides on the debate.

Sister Carol Keehan, president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, which represents Catholic hospitals, said they are "pleased with the White House announcement that a resolution has been reached that protects the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic institutions."

Keehan was a vocal critic of the Jan. 20 mandate.

Louise Melling, ACLU deputy legal director for the ACLU, also backed the decision, saying the group's main concern was that women had access to contraceptive coverage -- and that the president's announcement today ensured religious institutions have the ability to opt out and still let women retain coverage.

Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Womens Law Center in Washington, said her organization is "very hopeful that this goal will be met without burdensome obstacles for women, no matter where they work." She added that they will "closely monitor the implementation of this new rule" to make sure that all women have access to contraception coverage.

Watch PBS NewsHour tonight for more on the changes, including an interview with Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. You can watch live online from 6 to 7 p.m. ET here.

Follow @jasokane

Follow @sarahclune

Pakistan's Youth Drawn to Ex-Cricketer Politician

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:06:00 EDT

Pakistan is embroiled in yet another round of political controversies, but a glamorous cricket star with an anti-corruption and anti-American message is attracting attention and some support among the country's youth, who have been turned off by the constant feuding among the traditional parties.

Hundreds of thousands have shown up at rallies for Imran Khan, head of the newly formed Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice) party. He has been promising a return to a more transparent government and to rid the country of corruption.

In January, Pakistan's Supreme Court began contempt proceedings against Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani for allegedly failing to pursue a corruption case against President Asif Ali Zardari.

The ruling Pakistan People's Party also is facing a court challenge over a secret memorandum allegedly drafted by Pakistan's former ambassador to the United States, Hussain Haqqani, asking the United States for help with a possible military coup.

With the controversies, there is more talk of possibly holding early elections, now tentatively scheduled for March 2013. Young people would comprise a big part of the electorate -- those under age 25 are estimated at 63 percent of the 187 million population, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

Kalsoom Lakhani, CEO and founder of Invest2Innovate -- a Washington, D.C.-based organization focused on social entrepreneurship in Pakistan -- works with the country's youth. She said the sense of frustration over the political scene is leading to a desire for change.

A YouGov-Cambridge survey of 1,000 Pakistanis conducted last year showed most would vote for Khan's party and thought it was the most likely to eradicate corruption and tackle foreign policy problems.

Arif Rafiq, editor of The Pakistan Policy blog, who has been following Khan's party's campaign closely, said the upper middle class in Pakistan has previously preferred military dictatorships over civilian government to bring order and calm in the country. But that seems to be changing, he said.

"People tended to side toward the army in the past," Rafiq said. "Now they see Imran Khan as a replacement."

Khan, who tweets regularly, represents a symbol of patriotism and change, said Lakhani.

"People are very optimistic right now, especially about Imran," she said. "He comes across as young and hip and very much 'with it.' And he understands what Pakistan needs right now."

Khan also isn't afraid to criticize Pakistan for its dependent relationship with the United States and is highly critical of the U.S. role in the nation and the war on terror.

"He's appealing to the middle class and the upper middle class, who have anti-politician sentiments, anti-U.S. sentiments and are very critical of the status quo," said Rafiq. "He is their anti-politician politician."

But not everyone is optimistic about Khan's "tsunami," as he promises, to sweep away all that's wrong with Pakistani politics. His critics, who remain loyal to parties that have maintained power in the past, often call him arrogant and naïve, with an unrealistic approach to solving the corruption crisis in the country. Some also see him as too right-wing, and criticize him for being too conservative and anti-American.

Moeed Yusuf, South Asia adviser at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said Khan's main opposition lies in those who want to preserve things the way they are -- namely politicians who currently have power and rank, and those who depend on the patronage network on which Pakistan has traditionally operated.

Yusuf said that despite Khan's popularity, his party is not likely to sweep elections next year because people in Pakistan generally vote based on their perception of who has a better chance of winning.

"Supporting and voting in Pakistan never go together," he said. "If people don't think [Imran Khan] will win, they won't waste their vote on him."

Lakhani agrees, and said that Khan's support among the middle class youth, who are generating the supportive buzz in social media, may also not translate into votes, because many have traditionally been non-voters. She said those who do show up at the polls are people who face direct impact of the energy and gas shortage in the country.

"The people that vote at the end of the day are the ones whose energy gets cut if they don't vote for the right politician," she said. "The people that vote are people like my driver, who are worried about the prices of sugar and electricity."

Khan's party's success at the polls is yet to be seen, but most analysts agree he is stoking a sense of nationalism in the country.

"The biggest service that Imran Khan's party has done to Pakistan is that it has transformed this narrative of despondence into a narrative of some hope," Yusuf said.

View all of our World coverage and follow us on Twitter.

Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme?

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:25:00 EDT

Social Security cards. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Solman answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news here on his Making Sen$e page. Here's Friday's query:

Gwynn Pealer: I thought I understood Social Security, but all this political [baloney] has me confused. I thought Social Security was like other pension funds where contributions were invested in a way so that it was not a Ponzi scheme. I understood that Social Security funds were invested in government bonds and that the taxpayers were expected to pay them back with interest. What else is the Social Security fund invested in?

Paul Solman: No, Gwynn, Social Security was originally designed as a "pay-as-you-go" system in which each succeeding generation of workers is supposed to take care of the last. But, of course, all workers are charged a "payroll" tax of 6.2 percent up to $110,100 in earnings (an increase of $3,300 from the 2011 max), as are their employers. (The employee half has been suspended again until Feb. 29.) That money is supposed to provide for today's retirees, as their Federal Insurance Contributions Act (or "FICA") taxes were supposed to pay for those who preceded them. To the extent that more money was collected than paid out in any given year, it was ostensibly set aside in a "fund."

But there is no escrow account. In fact, the money has been used to purchase U.S. Treasury securities -- to be blunt, loaned back to the U.S. government to cover its annual deficits. So the "Social Security Trust Fund" is nothing more nor less than roughly $2.6 trillion of U.S. bonds (IOUs), sold off to raise cash to the extent that benefit payments exceed payroll tax revenues in any given year. The problem: When Treasury bonds are sold off, the government has to refinance -- to again borrow the equivalent amount by issuing more U.S. bonds, dollar for dollar. Our best explanation of this, including a trip to the legendary Social Security Trust Fund "lockbox," aired back in 2001.

This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour's blog of news and insight.Follow @PaulSolman

The Daily Frame

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:13:00 EDT

Click to enlarge.

Children view Richard Ansdell's painting, "The Hunted Slaves," at the International Slavery Museum on Thursday in Liverpool, England. Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.

Romney Faces Conservative Test at CPAC

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:46:00 EDT

Mitt Romney's book is for sale at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC. Photo By Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call.

We are coming to you live from the Marriott Wardman Park hotel in Washington, D.C., where Day 2 of the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference is underway and where Republican presidential contenders Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich will speak Friday.

Four years ago this is where Romney ended his presidential campaign. Friday, he hopes to give his current White House bid a jolt after Santorum's sweep of the contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri zapped the front-runner momentum he gained after wins in Florida and Nevada.

Romney previewed his CPAC remarks in an interview Thursday night with Fox News.The former Massachusetts governor was pressed by host Sean Hannity to explain his inability to "close the deal" with conservative voters.

"First of all, I'd note that I won among conservatives in New Hampshire. I won solidly among conservatives in Florida, won among conservatives in Nevada, and have the most delegates in this race. So, I wouldn't say that I haven't been able to get good support from conservatives," Romney said.

Romney also indicated he would describe his record as governor and point out some of the things that "get hidden over time." He said that would include his economic record, but also his handling of social issues, such as a contraception controversy similar to the one now taking place on the national stage.

"The legislature passed a bill for a morning after pill, insisted that Catholic churches provide this to their employees and universities and hospitals," Romney said. "I vetoed that bill. I was one of those that stood up and fought against the intrusion on religious liberty in my state."

Romney also said he "led the charge" to reverse the Massachusetts state Supreme Court's decision allowing for same-sex marriage.

"I have a record of being a strong conservative on the issues that matter, and I'll point that out to my friends at CPAC," Romney said.

In 2008, Romney was seen as the conservative alternative to then-front-runner and eventual GOP nominee Sen. John McCain. Now it appears conservatives are searching for an alternative to him.

Click here to look back at the NewsHour's coverage of the 2008 conference. Make particular note of two CPAC attendees' reaction to the news that Romney was dropping out of the race:

CONFERENCE ATTENDEE: I'm devastated, and I'm on the verge of tears right now.

CORINA PYSA, Romney Supporter: This is just really disappointing. There is no conservative candidate in the race anymore, and Romney, he was our hope for us.

This time around, Romney's path back into conservatives' hearts may be to convince them that he remains their best hope of defeating President Obama.

While much has been made about the difference between Romney's 2008 appearance and his impending 2012 go-around Friday, it's also worth looking back at last year's CPAC, which served as the first cattle call of the 2012 campaign. Click here for the NewsHour's recap of the 2011 gathering.

CPAC DAY ONE

NewsHour politics desk assistant Alex Bruns was at CPAC on Thursday and noted that the opening of the three-day event seemed to offer something for everyone -- from a "State of the United States Senate" address by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to a conservative-focused dating symposium put on by TheTeaParty.net.

Former presidential candidate Herman Cain drew what seemed to be the largest crowd of the day as supporters stood in the aisles to hear the former Godfather's Pizza chief executive tout his familiar 9-9-9 plan and announce his support for the congressional campaign of Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher in Ohio.

The downstairs exhibition hall at the Marriott Wardman Park featured hundreds of conservative-themed booths with attendees passing out fliers and standard convention wares.

The speakers offered some creative attacks on President Obama.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry brought the ballroom crowd to its feet when he told supporters, "If it's halftime in America, I'm fearful of what the final score's gonna be if we let this president start the second half at quarterback."

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., hit Mr. Obama the hardest, asking rhetorically if the president "hates rich people." Paul provided a response to his own question by answering, "The president doesn't really hate all rich people, just those who don't contribute to his campaign."

CONTRACEPTION CONTROVERSY

The Obama administration -- and possibly the president himself -- is expected Friday to address a new contraception rule requiring religious organizations to provide employees with health insurance that covers birth control, which has drawn the ire of Catholic bishops, Republican lawmakers and even some Democrats.

ABC News' Jake Tapper has the details:

The move, based on state models, will almost certainly not satisfy bishops and other religious leaders since it will preserve the goal of women employees having their birth control fully covered by health insurance.

Sources say it will be respectful of religious beliefs but will not back off from that goal, which many religious leaders oppose since birth control is in violation of their religious beliefs.

The administration has found itself doing a bit of a tight-rope act on the contraception decision, trying to balance concerns raised by Catholic leaders, who argue the mandate infringes on their First Amendment right to religious freedom, with those of others who contend the policy is vital to women's health.

Politico and the New York Times each looked at the political response from Catholic bishops to the Obama administration's decision to require religious-affiliated hospitals and universities provide free contraception to employees.

Glenn Thrush and Carrie Budoff Brown write for Politico about how the president was boxed in on the issue after former White House chief of staff William Daley orchestrated an Oval Office meeting for himself, Mr. Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times, meanwhile, details how the bishops were ready to respond once the administration announced its decision last year to move forward with the mandate.

2012 LINE ITEMS

The Washington Post's Felicia Sonmez notes that Texas Rep. Ron Paul is not attending this year's CPAC, citing "travel constraints." Paul has not held a public campaign event since a caucus night rally Tuesday in Minnesota.
Foster Friess, the man funding the pro-Santorum Red, White and Blue Fund super PAC, told Bloomberg Television he doesn't think his money is going to be necessary because Santorum is giving "an inspirational speech that is resonating very well" with donors. He said that he hasn't had to do outreach for Santorum. Watch the interview here.

"The nice thing is I have not even reached out. I got word from the Red White and Blue Fund that some guy sent in a million dollars. We had no idea who he was. We got word two days ago that he's going to send in some more. But they are coming in unsolicited and the neat thing about the Red White and Blue fund is that people can give unlimited amounts whereas to the campaign, they can only give $2,500," Friess said.

TOP TWEETS

Can't believe it was 5 years ago today that Pres Obama announced for President. I remember that historic freezing day like it was yesterday
— Dan Pfeiffer (@pfeiffer44) February 10, 2012

src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

I'm doing a Google+ hangout with @mkhammer tomorrow at 10:50am ET at #CPAC. Join us! ht.ly/8Z23A #decision2012
— Rick Santorum (@RickSantorum) February 10, 2012

src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

OUTSIDE THE LINES

The Washington Post reported that Rep. Spencer Bachus, an influential Alabama Republican who serves as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee is under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for possible violations of insider-trading laws. The Post notes the case "is the first of its kind involving a member of Congress." Bachus "has been a frequent trader on Capitol Hill, buying stock options while overseeing the nation's banking and financial services industries," the Post reported.
The House of Representatives approved ethics legislation Thursday that prohibits insider trading by lawmakers and congressional staff members. Republicans leaders stripped a number of key provisions from the measure, including one that would have increased oversight of the "political intelligence" industry, reports the Washington Post's Paul Kane. The House version must now be reconciled with a tougher Senate proposal that passed last week.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports on "a growing, lucrative -- and legal -- practice in Washington that employs a network of brokers, lobbyists and political insiders who arrange private meetings between hedge funds and officials, including lawmakers and their aides" to get early word about upcoming government action.
The Hill's Keith Laing reports Thursday that House speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, expressed uncertainty about passage of the $260 billion transportation bill.
Former Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, in Washington for CPAC, tells Politico's David Catanese that he's keeping his options open when it comes to challenging Democratic Sen. Mark Begich in 2014.
Joseph Kennedy III moves, signaling he may run for retiring Rep. Barney Frank's seat.
Roll Call's Abby Livingston writes that former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords asked her aide Ron Barber to run for her seat in Congress.
Nancy Pelosi has some fun with Stephen Colbert.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

Mitt Romney delivers remarks at the Northern Virginia Technology Council/CEA Presidential Series in Reston, Va., at 7:45 a.m., addresses CPAC at 12:40 p.m. and holds a town hall in Portland, Maine, at 5:15 p.m.
Rick Santorum addresses CPAC at 10:25 a.m.
Newt Gingrich addresses CPAC at 4:10 p.m.
Ron Paul has no public events scheduled.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @quinnbowman.

Love Story Sheds Light on How Society Treats People With Disabilities

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:46:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JEFFREY BROWN: And finally tonight: a love story that sheds light on how society deals with the disabled.

Judy Woodruff has our book conversation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: There are more than 50 million Americans who have some sort of disability, according to the Census Bureau. They range from profound, needing a wheelchair or other assistance with daily activity, to less restrictive, and from physical disabilities to cognitive and emotional.

Rachel Simon has given a lot of thought to their lives, how the rest of society sees them, since her sister is intellectually impaired. She wrote a memoir in 2002 called "Riding the Bus With My Sister." Her most recent book is a novel, "The Story of Beautiful Girl." It's about the lives of two people who meet living in an institution, and it follows them for four decades.

And Rachel Simon joins us now.

Thank you for being here.

RACHEL SIMON, author, "The Story of Beautiful Girl": Thank you. It's so wonderful to be here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Rachel, you had written the book about your sister, "Riding the Bus With My Sister." What do you think you accomplished with that book?

RACHEL SIMON: Gosh.

Well, I was transformed, because I learned that during the course of my life and my sister's life, there had been some major civil rights development in the lives of people with disabilities. And the major one is called self-determination, that people with disabilities have the right to choose how to live their own lives.

This all started because of the closing of the institutions in which people like my sister were asked to live, forced to live for a lot of the time we have in American history, for about the last 150 years in American history.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, after that experience, your story, your family's story, why did you want to write a novel? This is a novel, we should say, about a man and a woman who were in an institution. They met. He was not intellectually disabled, but he had a hearing impairment.

RACHEL SIMON: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: She was intellectually impaired, could not speak.

Why that story?

RACHEL SIMON: Well, why that story and why fiction. I will try to do that why that story first.

My sister grew up at home. My sister did not grow up in an institution. And this was because of all -- funny coincidences in my family history. My father actually grew up in an orphanage. And, therefore, he knew what institutional life was like.

And when we were growing up, he used to say, "When you live in an institution, even if someone comes to visit you, which his father did, you know at the bottom of your heart that you're not really loved. So, no child of mine will live in an institution."

And this was then the family belief, that people deserve to be out in the world and have the same rights as everyone else and be raised with the family, which my sister was.

I then wrote "Riding the Bus With My Sister." It led me to do a lot of public speaking. And I met a lot of people who didn't have the experience my sister had, who had lived in institutions. And I felt like their stories were not being heard. A lot of people in America don't even know we had institutions for people with intellectual disabilities.

All they think of are people who had psychiatric issues. But there's a whole separate system of institutions for people like my sister, and we still have them in America.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And the story, you took two people who you have them essentially fall in love, have a baby.

RACHEL SIMON: Yes. Yeah.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And then you follow them for several decades.

RACHEL SIMON: Yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Why did you want to do it that way?

RACHEL SIMON: Sometimes, stories find you. This story actually emerged from my pen without me really planning to do it.

I had been thinking for years about writing something about institutions and the people who lived in them from the point of view of the people who lived in them, not the point of view of other people. And one day, I just started writing. I do write by hand.

And it just started coming out that there was the character of Beautiful Girl, also known as Lynnie, who had an intellectual disability and whose parents put her in an institution in the late 1950s, and then the man, who was a John Doe, John Doe number 42, who was deaf.

He actually was based on a real-life person who I discovered in a book called "God Knows His Name: The True Story of John Doe No. 24" by a writer named Dave Bakke. I came across that book. It was in fact about an African-American deaf teenager who was found in 1945 wandering the streets in Illinois. No one who knew he was. And so he was put in an institution for people who were called feeble-minded.

And he was there for 50 years until he died. And I was so moved by that, I thought I need to write about this sort of a character.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What did -- the fact that it's a novel, the fact that it's non-fiction -- the fact that it's fiction, what did that allow you to do in terms of telling the story of how society treats people like this?

RACHEL SIMON: Well, as a sibling of somebody with a disability -- my sister is only 11 months younger than I am -- I have spent my life translating -- translating the world for her and translating her to the world.

And so to the extent possible, I understand how her mind works. And to be able to write it as fiction, I was able to fully enter the mind of a character like my sister and the gentleman who is the male character in the story and write it from their points of view, as well as the point of view of an aide who works with them and a retired schoolteacher who ends up being involved in the whole story who we have left out of all of this.

So to be able to write it from multiple points of view, which, as a sibling, is kind of how I have seen the world, that there are all of these people who are involved in the lives of people with disabilities, and the people themselves, and we don't really give equal weight to all those stories. And we never hear from the people with disabilities.

I wanted to be able to do it from their point of view, see the world through their eyes, and show the world not just how the world treats them, but how they feel about how the world treats them.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You clearly seem to feel that their point of view, the point of view of people with disabilities, is just not understood.

RACHEL SIMON: It's not given respect. It's not treated in a dignified way.

They're infantilized. They're ignored. They're made fun of. And I think it's so incredibly important that if you are somebody who feels a passion for people with disabilities because you have a loved one who has a disability, that you need to go out and you need to fight for their rights.

And I have always felt that way as my sister's sister. But because I can write, it gave me the ability to do that in a book that therefore has led other people to seeing the world through the eyes of people like my sister.

I've had so many people get in touch with me and say, you know, when I go to the supermarket and there's the guy with Down syndrome who is bagging my groceries, I'm never going to look at him the same way again. Now I want to know who he is.

That means a lot.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Rachel Simon.

The story -- the book is "The Story of Beautiful Girl," your sixth book.

Thank you very much for talking with us.

RACHEL SIMON: Thank you so much. Thank you.

In Bailing Out Greece, Germans Eye 'Functional, Surviving Euro'

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:38:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

RAY SUAREZ: Late today, E.U. finance ministers said Greece would have to make even more cuts to receive the bailout money, even if there is a new government. The E.U. nation pressing hardest for austerity is its richest, Germany.

Margaret Warner reports tonight on how that country's prosperous citizens are wary about paying bailout money to Greece and other debtor nations.

MARGARET WARNER: The aisles of Stuttgart's Markthalle are stocked full, French cheeses, Italian prosciutto di parma, hand-stuffed German sausage, fresh-baked bread and pastries. And on a weekday morning, people are buying.

CHRISTINA PAPADOPOULOU, gourmet shop: All the people who come here, they're doing well, so we don't feel the crisis here.

MARGARET WARNER: The crisis, of course, is the European financial one. It sent borrowing rates soaring for the region's most indebted countries, like Greece, Italy, and Spain. It threatens to drag down the European Union's economy even for its strongest member, Germany.

Fruit and vegetable seller Michael Mayer senses a cautious mood among his customers, his barometer, tropical fruit sales.

MICHAEL MAYER, fruit and vegetable seller (through translator): The crisis has meant people have less money to buy daily luxuries, so they buy less, two mangoes instead of four. You buy just what you need.

MARGARET WARNER: Even with record low unemployment and an envied manufacturing base, Germans remain ever-careful with their money. Cash, not credit, is the coin of the realm.

That financial prudence is complicating matters for Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her fellow E.U. members, the IMF and the U.S., are urging her to devote more German money to bolster the E.U. bailout fund. But she must also listen to her own public.

KLAUS BLUMENAUER, realtor (through translator): Three hundred and fifty thousand. This one's probably 450,000.

MARGARET WARNER: On a major purchase, like a home, Germans are especially prudent, says Klaus Blumenauer, a real estate agency owner in the Frankfurt suburb of Konigstein. Germany didn't experience the recent real estate bubble or crash, he said, because Germans and their banks are so careful. Mortgages require a 30 percent down payment.

KLAUS BLUMENAUER (through translator): The Germans are conservative in regards to home and debt. Of course, there are always people who don't have enough equity, or don't earn enough, and still would like to buy a home. But the banks don't play ball. They, in fact, protect the customers from wrong decisions.

MARGARET WARNER: And for those who do buy, their goal becomes to pay down the mortgage as quickly as possible.

KLAUS BLUMENAUER (through translator): The Germans don't like debt so much. In real estate especially, most Germans have the goal to have the home free from debt. That's more their philosophy than to say, let's borrow money.

MARGARET WARNER: So it's no wonder they bristle at being asked to bail out their freer-spending southern neighbors. Germans are still paying for the multitrillion-dollar reconstruction of East Germany over the past two decades.

And Germans note they voluntarily undertook painful austerity and economic reform more than a decade ago, while much of Europe embarked on a spending binge financed by the newly introduced euro.

Norbert Walter recently retired as chief economist at Deutsche Bank.

NORBERT WALTER, former chief economist, Deutsche Bank: We were characterized for a considerable period as the sick man of Europe. We were not the sick man of Europe. We were on therapy. The standard of living of Germans didn't increase at all for actually a decade at a time when everybody else enjoyed a wonderful increase of the standard of living.

MARGARET WARNER: Germany's therapy was a national project. Unions held down wage demands, industries retooled and political leaders tightened unemployment and other benefits.

It wasn't easy for a country built on a generous social welfare compact, said Nils Schmid, finance minister for the prosperous state of Baden-Wurttemberg.

NILS SCHMID, finance minister, Baden-Wurttemberg: We raised the retirement age, or it will be raised step by step to the age of 67. We had to push this reform through, although it was very unpopular and still is.

MARGARET WARNER: The tough medicine paid off for Germany with greater productivity in its industry and lower unemployment and government deficits.

Now, before agreeing to add more to the E.U.'s bailout coffers, Merkel is insisting that debt-ridden countries like Greece and Italy enact their own tough reforms. Finance Minister Schmid, despite being a member of the opposition party, said Merkel is right to demand a quid pro quo. But he'd like to see quicker German action on the bailout front to stave off further market turmoil.

NILS SCHMID: I think that we need both. We need European solidarity. That means fixing the euro and helping other member states such as Greece or Portugal. But we -- at the same time, we need very strict rules concerning budget discipline.

MARGARET WARNER: But public sentiment varies.

At the landmark Paulaner restaurant in Stuttgart, we found three young entrepreneurs who own and run small firms. Like most Germans, they say, they all took a hit in the '08-'09 global financial crisis, but lived modestly, kept investing in their businesses, and bounced back stronger than ever.

Now they're feeling anxious, and a bit ambivalent, about what Germany's being called on to do.

Does the euro crisis worry you?

CARSTEN THEURER, software developer: Yes, for sure, because you never know what will happen at the end.

MARGARET WARNER: Carsten Theurer is a software developer. He says he and his friends pay high taxes, and they're galled by reports that many wealthy Greeks, Italians and others don't.

CARSTEN THEURER: No one is happy about those little stories about Greece, how they are doing, that they are not paying their taxes, that they are a little bit corrupt. But we are just interested in a functional and a surviving euro.

JAN CURRLE, welding technology supplier (through translator): This euphoria about the euro which we had at the beginning, we now have to face all the errors that were made, which means spending money so this doesn't fall apart, because, if Greece falls, then maybe Portugal and Spain also fall. And then there's a big mess.

MARGARET WARNER: Their annoyance doesn't surprise Norbert Walter, but he says Germans should look to their own past before judging others as incapable of changing.

NORBERT WALTER: I believe if Germans have benefited so much from the Allied forces that accepted that the Germans could be different from what they were in the Third Reich, we shouldn't allow ourselves to argue, the Greek have always cheated, they will cheat in the indefinite future, and, therefore, it is not worthwhile and we cannot even think of helping them.

MARGARET WARNER: But try telling that to Magdalena Beulshausen. The 77-year-old pensioner started saving as a girl, and never stopped.

MAGDALENA BEULSHAUSEN, pensioner (through translator): It wasn't too hard for me or my husband, if you only limited yourself a bit.

MARGARET WARNER: Now she has little patience for, or confidence in, her indebted European siblings.

MAGDALENA BEULSHAUSEN (through translator): I think it's like with an alcoholic, who you try to save, but you can't until he's all the way at the bottom. Now they don't want to accept that they should save and reduce their spending, but they also don't want for someone from Germany to come and say, okay, that's how you have to do it.

MARGARET WARNER: Proving once again that, even in the 27-member European Union, all politics is local.

RAY SUAREZ: In her next report, Margaret looks at Italy's response to the debt crisis.

What Greece's Latest Cuts Mean for Workers, EU

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:33:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JEFFREY BROWN: A short time ago, I spoke to John Psaropoulos in Athens. He's a freelance reporter and writes the blog The New Athenian.

John Psaropoulos, welcome back to the program.

These talks over cuts had stalled even last night. What was the hardest issue to resolve?

JOHN PSAROPOULOS, The New Athenian: It turns out from the comments made by the party leaders after they emerged from those eight-hour-long talks on Wednesday that the sticking point was one sole issue.

It was whether more money was going to be cut from the pensions budget in 2012, an amount to the tune of $400 million, in addition to roughly that much again that had already been decided to be taken out. The conservative leader, Antonis Samaras, the junior partner in this coalition, but the one who is poised to win election over and above the socialists if an election were to be held in the coming days, is the one who held forth.

And in the comments he made earlier this evening, he said that it was one of the issues that he managed to save from the clutches of the troika of Greece's creditors, the other issues being salaries -- more salaries being cut from the private sector.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, give us a sense of how -- who will feel these austerity cuts and to what degree.

JOHN PSAROPOULOS: Well, the austerity is going to be felt by everyone, because 150,000 people now employed in the public sector won't have a job at the end of four years from now, 15,000 of those people will go this year.

The second thing that's going to happen in the public sector is that major utilities, the natural gas state monopoly, the state oil refiner, the state gaming monopoly and other utilities like the water sewage companies will all have to be privatized in the first six months of this year. Those are the -- some of the jewels in the Greek crown. Those are highly profitable state companies.

And so there will -- one will expect more layoffs there, because one of the things that is going into this austerity package is a legal amendment that will allow the state to dismiss people from state companies. That tenure immunity that they have had is going to be broken. They will be able to be dismissed.

In the private sector, the pain of course comes in the form of a dramatic lowering of minimum wage by 22 percent, and for those under 25 by 30 percent, which means that their take-home pay will be a little more than 400 euros, $550 or so. This is going to obviously severely depress the amount of disposable income in the marketplace.

The main argument of the unions against this austerity package is precisely that it is going to reinforce the recessionary spiral that Greece is already in, and if you count the amount by which the Greek economy has shrunk since the beginning of the crisis, it is now 13 points of GDP and rising.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, now, of course, you do have pushback there from all sides, as we heard the German finance minister raising concerns that this doesn't go far enough.

Is there a sense among Greek officials that they have done all they can and that this is -- this should be enough for the international community?

JOHN PSAROPOULOS: Well, the politicians are already spinning this as an enormously difficult political berth, and they have already begun to massage and to spin the message to their respective constituencies as a necessary evil, particularly the two right-wing contingents of the coalition, the people who were not responsible for putting Greece on the path of European Union-IMF-sponsored bailouts in the first place.

That was done by the socialists who were elected to power in October of 2009. So, the conservatives and the right-wingers have a platform to at least argue that midway, in medias res, if you like, along this policy route, they were forced to agree to a necessary evil, because to opt out of the bailout system would simply have been an even worse, an almost catastrophic option for Greece.

JEFFREY BROWN: So, you do have the protesters in the streets. There's a strike called for tomorrow.

What can you gauge about -- and then, of course, there's the parliamentary -- parliament taking this up with an election on the weekend. What can you gauge about political opinion, through polls or other ways? And do we know whether this is all going to actually happen as they've said today?

JOHN PSAROPOULOS: Well, the plan is for this bailout agreement to be submitted to parliament and voted into law on Sunday night.

The debate is scheduled to begin on Saturday morning. However, the biggest unions in the land have organized a 48-hour strike partly coinciding with that debate. And they have organized a protest on Sunday night to coincide with the vote.

Even if these demonstrations fail to dissuade lawmakers, the fact is that the political ground is slipping very, very dramatically away from the present makeup of the Greek parliament -- 254 seats out of the 300 are included in the three parties that form the coalition, the socialists, the conservatives and the right-wing LAOS.

If you look at opinion polls now, however, fully 42 percent of voters would go to the communists and left-wing parties, parties left of the socialist PASOK. That is a dramatic shift never before seen in Greek politics. It represents a threat to the incumbent powers and suggests that, if an election is held in the spring, as is widely expected, the result may be the most unpredictable that we have seen in almost four decades.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, John Psaropoulos in Athens once again, speaking to us from Athens, thanks so much.

JOHN PSAROPOULOS: Thank you.

Austerity Plan Might Ease Greece Out of its 2-Year Debt Crisis

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:30:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, a political deal in Greece that may pull Europe back from the abyss of its two-year debt crisis.

After weeks of negotiations, the coalition government of Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos reported agreement on yet another round of austerity measures. Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, speaking in Brussels, said it would satisfy the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

EVANGELOS VENIZELOS, Greek finance minister: After a long, tough period of negotiations, we have finally a staff-level agreement with the troika for a new, strong and credible program.

JEFFREY BROWN: The Greek goal was to win a new bailout of $170 billion and to prevent national default. Under the plan, Greece agreed to cut its minimum wage by more than 20 percent, fire 15,000 public sector employees and end dozens of job guarantee provisions.

Greek leaders also said that, instead of cutting pensions by as much as $400 million, they had found unspecified alternative cuts. The agreement won praise from some, including Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, at a late-day meeting in Brussels.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE, managing director, International Monetary Fund: There's clearly some very encouraging news coming out of Athens, and after the very heavy-duty work that has been done lately, I think it's positive.

JEFFREY BROWN: And European markets reacted favorably. Stocks moved upward. The euro traded near two-month highs.

But Germany warned, the deal fell short. The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said the Greeks had not met a requirement to bring national debt down to 120 percent of economic output.

And on the streets in Greece, there was outrage.

MAN (through translator): We took to the streets to fight for our rights and for the future of our children.

JEFFREY BROWN: Electrical workers protested the austerity cuts, and Greek labor unions planned a 48-hour strike beginning tomorrow.

In the meantime, the Greek finance minister said the government also had the outlines of a separate agreement with private creditors. It could cut the country's private debt in half, with creditors accepting a 70 percent reduction in the value of their holdings.

Can White House, Religious Leaders, GOP Reach Consensus on Birth Control?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:20:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

RAY SUAREZ: And to the battle over contraception coverage.

It's been nearly three weeks since the Obama administration announced new regulations, but the stakes are higher, as both sides harden their positions.

From the Capitol to the White House, the political heat has been rising all week over a new federal mandate on birth control. Under the rule, religious schools and hospitals will have to offer insurance policies that include contraceptive services for employees free of charge. Roman Catholic officials in particular say the rule would force them to violate church teachings.

And Republicans in Congress, like New Hampshire Sen, Kelly Ayotte, have raised their voices.

SEN. KELLY AYOTTE, R-N.H.: This is not a women's rights issue. This is a religious liberty issue. And it can apply to all faiths.

RAY SUAREZ: In a floor speech Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner threatened legislative action, but it was unclear today what form that would take.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER, R-Ohio: I think the House is going to work, again, through the regular order with real deliberations, about how we protect the religious freedom of the American people. That's the issue. And we're -- and we're keenly focused on it.

RAY SUAREZ: Women rights groups and many Democrats, like California Senator Barbara Boxer, are now coming to the administration's defense.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER, D-Calif.: Women in this country are tired of being treated like a political football by Republicans in Congress, who have tried continually and are continuing to try to take away their benefits, to take away their rights.

RAY SUAREZ: White House officials, seeking to defuse the issue, suggest a still-undefined compromise is possible.

Tuesday, on the NewsHour, the president's senior campaign strategist, David Axelrod, pointed out that 28 states already have similar rules.

DAVID AXELROD, senior Obama campaign strategist: We're going to have a year's period of time in which to transition to this. And that will give us a chance to look at what these others -- how this is implemented elsewhere, how we can implement it here in the best and fairest way, but certainly advancing the principle that women deserve access to contraception.

RAY SUAREZ: The mandate is based on recommendations from the U.S. Institute of Medicine study that showed reproductive health services without co-pays leads to better women's health.

It was the second major birth control decision in recent weeks. In December, the administration barred selling the Plan B contraceptive to girls 16 and younger without a prescription.

We debate the Department of Health and Human Services decision now with Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Jill Warren, executive director of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. It's not an official United Methodist Church body.

Guests, just a short time before tonight's program, the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, said the White House is trying hard to address the concerns of the church -- quote -- "I'm determined to see that this gets worked out, and I believe we can work it out."

Given the position of the church, Anthony Picarello, and the current state of the ruling from the Obama administration, is there a middle ground? Can a compromise position be found that leaves both sides getting most, but not all of what they want?

ANTHONY PICARELLO, general counsel, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: Well, the president and vice president, the executive branch, is entirely within -- has this decision entirely within their control.

So they can do what it is that we have been urging them to do from the outset, which is to remove these items from the mandate, so that people are not forced against their consciences to subsidize them, to sponsor them in health plans.

They could also dramatically increase the breadth of what is an extremely narrow religious exemption that they proposed in the first instance, which covers really only individual churches and basically a very small perimeter around that. So it leaves out charities. It leaves out hospitals. It leaves out schools.

So they have the power entirely within their hands to expand that. We have been hearing lots of talk for a long time about a desire to accommodate, but we haven't seen any action. And so I think we're going to wait until we see action before we . . .

RAY SUAREZ: But I'm trying to figure out what a broadened -- to use your term . . .

ANTHONY PICARELLO: Sure.

RAY SUAREZ: . . . a broadened ruling might look like . . .

ANTHONY PICARELLO: Sure.

RAY SUAREZ: . . . since the two positions are mutually contradictory.

ANTHONY PICARELLO: Well, I don't know that there's so much of a contradiction.

I think, again, what we're looking for in terms of breadth is to protect the religious liberty interests and consciences of all of those who would be affected by the mandate. So that means employers -- religious employers, yes, but also employers with religious people running them or other people of conviction who are running them.

It means religious insurers. And they do exist. Under this mandate, they're required to include in their policies that they write things that they don't agree with as a matter of religious conviction, and individuals as well who have to pay for it through their premiums.

So all of those entities are the folks whose conscience rights are affected. And the bishops are concerned with all of them, and they have advocated for all of them.

RAY SUAREZ: It sounds like you want something even broader, not just for the colleges and universities and hospitals, but even Catholic employers.

ANTHONY PICARELLO: Well, yes, because the principle here is that of religious liberty. And it's not only religious employers that are entitled to religious liberty under the Constitution.

So all of those should be protected. They should not be put in this situation in the first place. They shouldn't be required by the government to provide, through sponsorship and subsidy, benefits that are offensive to their moral beliefs.

RAY SUAREZ: Jill Warren, is there a middle ground? Is there a position that you can contemplate that gets Mr. Picarello more of what he wants, without giving away something that you view as essential?

JILL WARREN, executive director, Methodist Federation for Social Action: Well, first let me say how much I appreciate being able to be here on the show with you, Ray, and with Anthony.

The issue for me is that it's not about a religious exemption or creating some sort of compromise position. It's a position of health care and health care policy. And that is different than religion.

And even though I am part of a religious nonprofit, the United Methodist Church and the Methodist Federation for Social Action, we don't see this in any way as a religious issue. So, for me, in answer to your question, the compromise that might be sought by the Roman Catholic tradition isn't one that is of the best public good for all of us that would be covered by this policy.

RAY SUAREZ: Where does -- when you hear Mr. Picarello talk about conscience . . .

JILL WARREN: Yes.

RAY SUAREZ: . . . where does conscience attach at the nexus of three different entities, insurers, employers and the ensured, who all may want different things?

JILL WARREN: That's right. Yes, that's right.

I think that one of the points that I would like to make in our conversation is that we have a choice about what insurance we choose, whether we choose a sectarian plan or we choose a public plan, or whether we choose no plan at all, or even have access to health care as an insurance option in the first place.

So, as an individual, I can choose what health plan I might most benefit from. I think, in this case, there are insurers, as Anthony has mentioned, and there are hospitals, but they are -- there are already exemptions for conscience clauses. And there are sectarian organizations who don't have to provide these services in the first place.

RAY SUAREZ: So, Catholic insured could invoke different options when given a list of possible insurers?

ANTHONY PICARELLO: Well, I wish that were so. I mean, that's precisely the problem, is that what we have is a situation where the federal government has come in and mandated that certain things be included in all health insurance plans nationwide.

This is private plans offered by religious institutions. This isn't governments-only plan. This isn't plans that are offered by people who happen to be government-funded. It's everybody. And so that freedom to which she was referring is exactly the freedom that we're urging. It's not something that's extreme.

It's only what we have currently, which is, when a religious entity wants to purchase a health insurance policy, it goes to an insurance company. It says, I want these things and not these things. And, you know, the heavens have not fallen in the situation where we provide that.

For example, right now, even under the current pre-mandate environment, nine out of 10 employer-sponsored health insurance plans include contraception. So, there's no scarcity of this coverage available. People can simply -- they're not forced to work for the church.

If they value that benefit so much, they can just choose a different employer. And if they work for the church . . .

RAY SUAREZ: Well, let me jump in there . . .

ANTHONY PICARELLO: Sure.

RAY SUAREZ: . . . because you noted that the heavens haven't fallen.

ANTHONY PICARELLO: Right.

RAY SUAREZ: And I don't know if they've fallen in the more than two dozen states where these mandates already exist.

What have Catholic institutions done to comply in places that already have similar strictures to the one just announced by the Obama administration?

ANTHONY PICARELLO: Ray, I'm glad you asked that question because it's coming up a lot.

There are 28 states that have some kind of contraceptive mandate. None of them are as broad as the one that the federal government has imposed. For example, all but -- the federal government mandate includes a mandate to provide sterilization. Only Vermont does that among those 28 states.

On top of that, most of those states have religious exemptions. And of those, all but three are broader than the one that HHS has chosen. So, basically, there's a lot more accommodation for religious exercise at the state level. And on top of that, states don't even -- you don't even need to take advantage of the religious exemption in order to avoid it in other ways, for example, by self-insurance.

Even in the restrictive states, many Catholic entities are able to avoid this by self-insurance.

RAY SUAREZ: Jill Warren, you heard Sen. Kelly Ayotte say that this is not a women's rights issue, not a health issue. This is a religious liberty issue.

What about the health interests that a lot of people on your side of the argument are talking about?

JILL WARREN: Well, it's -- obviously, I have a difference of opinion, because it is a health issue. It's a basic health issue.

Contraception, controlling whether you can plan your family, whether you can space your children, whether you want to have children, is a basic health issue. It's a biological fact that women can be impregnated, and against our will, I might add. So it absolutely is a health issue.

Barriers to education, barriers to the work force all center around whether you can control your own reproductive health. And in this case, I don't see it at all as a religious issue because there are already religious exemptions and people who can follow their conscience in making their choices.

So, for me, the policy is just good public policy for the common good.

RAY SUAREZ: Jill Warren and Anthony Picarello, thanks for joining me.

ANTHONY PICARELLO: Thank you.

JILL WARREN: My pleasure. Thank you.

News Wrap: Obama Waives No Child Left Behind Requirements for 10 States

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:14:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

HARI SREENIVASAN: President Obama granted waivers to 10 states today, excusing them from requirements of the No Child Left Behind law. The law mandated that all public school students be proficient in reading and math by 2014. But opponents said the goal was unrealistic, and that schools falling short were being punished unfairly.

Republicans said the president was overreaching his authority in granting the waivers. States given a waiver will have to set new targets for improving student performance.

The U.S. House has overwhelmingly approved its version of a bill that bans members of Congress from insider stock trading. It also affects officials in the executive branch. The issue gathered steam after a CBS report last fall that lawmakers were enriching themselves by trading on information not available to the public.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor wrote the measure.

REP. ERIC CANTOR, R-Va.: People in this country have a right to know and trust that officials at all levels of government are living under the same rules they are. If there is even the slightest appearance of impropriety, we ought to go ahead and prevent that from taking place.

HARI SREENIVASAN: House Republicans rejected a provision that requires so-called political intelligence firms to register the same as lobbyists. Those companies collect information from lawmakers, and then sell it to Wall Street firms.

Democrats like Sheila Jackson Lee argued the House should have followed the Senate's lead and included that language.

REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE, D-Texas: We are missing a large gap, Madam Speaker, by leaving out the provision on political intelligence, a $100 million industry. Yes, we're going to support this legislation, but we can't get to conference soon enough to make this bill comparable and ready for the American people.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The House and Senate will have to work out a compromise version of the bill. White House officials have said the president will sign it with or without the political intelligence section.

Wall Street managed only modest gains today. The Dow Jones industrial average added six points to close at 12,890. The Nasdaq rose 11 points to close at 2,927.

In Syria, the casualties climbed ever higher in the city of Homs. Opposition groups reported at least 100 people were killed there, as government forces blasted away again with artillery, mortars and rockets. Rebel fighters tried to resist, but were largely outgunned.

We have a report from Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News from neighboring Lebanon.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Their target is a Syrian army checkpoint on a road near Homs, just out of sight. The men of the Free Syrian Army have only light weapons. They're inexperienced, and have neither the numbers nor the firepower they need.

At night, the women mourn the fighters who are losing their lives everyday.

"Bashar al-Assad is a dog," she cries

Each death makes them hate the government more. A few miles away, in Homs, the shelling has made civilian life hell. Families cower inside. This is the sixth day of bombardment. Local men pull the injured and dead from houses blown apart by rockets and mortars.

The activist Danny Abdul Dayem wants the world outside to know what's happening in Homs.

DANNY ABDUL DAYEM, activist: There's bodies in that house, pieces of bodies in that house. This is a civilian house.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Medical supplies to treat wounded children are running out.

DR. MAHMOUD AL-MAHMOUD, Syria (through translator): Five children from the same family, five children from the same family. I appeal to the people of Aleppo and Damascus to take to the streets to put pressure on this criminal regime.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Activists in Idlib took these pictures of tanks on the streets. The rebels have been in control here, but for how much longer? There's a diplomatic impasse, and the Syrian government is making the most of it.

HARI SREENIVASAN: U.S. officials said they were considering ways to get food and medicine to the people of Homs, but it was unclear how that might work.

The U.S. Marine Corps scrambled today to explain a photo of Marines in Afghanistan posing with what looks like the Nazi S.S. symbol. The image was taken in 2010. It showed Marines with an American flag and another banner displaying a double lightning bolt logo. That same symbol was used by Nazi S.S. forces that murdered millions of Jews and others in World War II. A Marine spokeswoman said the Marines thought the symbol stood for sniper scouts.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the nation's first new nuclear power plant in more than 30 years. The vote today endorsed a plan to build two new reactors south of Augusta, Ga. The last time the commission approved construction of a nuclear plant was in 1978, a year before the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

Labor rights protesters called on tech giant Apple today to improve conditions at Chinese factories run by Apple suppliers. In Washington, the ethical iPhone group delivered nearly 200,000 petition signatures. There were similar events in a half-dozen other cities around the world. Apple has come under renewed pressure over reports of cramped working conditions, long hours and high injury rates at Chinese factories.

Those are some of the day's major stories.

As 'Let's Move!' Campaign Turns 2, Time for a Check-Up

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:13:00 EDT

John Cassidy, who holds Guinness World Records for several balloon-related tricks, performs a balloon act for first lady Michelle Obama in the Diplomatic Reception Room. White House photo by Chuck Kennedy.

Michelle Obama may be spending her time these days dancing with Ellen and racing Jimmy Fallon through the White House, but all the fun began with a much more serious moment: "My pediatrician pointed out some changes in my kids' body mass index that he just sort of checked us on."

As the first lady told Jim Lehrer two years ago when her signature "Let's Move!" campaign launched, the typical American lifestyle got the best of the Obama family in their pre-White House days. "It was a life that most working parents are dealing with, where you're juggling jobs and trying to get kids to and from and you're trying to make life easier."

That's why the mother who once allowed her family to indulge in too much television and junk food became the national spokeswoman for nutrition and exercise: She knows how easy it is to lose control and what it takes for an entire family to get back on track. Two years after she launched a campaign against childhood obesity, it's time to take stock of the progress in implementing those same principles on a national scale.

But first, it's worth a look back to the very beginning. Watch Jim Lehrer's full interview here:

By many markers, Mrs. Obama's simple goal "to shine a spotlight on this issue in a way that I couldn't do as a regular mom on the South Side of Chicago" has far exceeded expectations.

National legislation has changed the face of school lunches for 32 million children. Walgreens, Wal-Mart and a number of other chains have agreed to build 1,500 stores in food deserts in the coming years, bringing 9.5 million more Americans better access to fresh and healthy foods. More than 5,700 groups have partnered with the USDA to spread the word about the new MyPlate food-selection diagram and get simple nutritional information to families across the country.

In a recent survey by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than eight out of 10 Americans say they have heard of "Let's Move!" Thirty five percent say they've heard a lot about it.

But the backlash has been plentiful, too. Some say "Let's Move!" is just another excuse for the Obama administration to meddle in the everyday decisions of Americans. Others criticize the links to Wal-Mart or worry that the emphasis on obesity could damage the self-esteem of American youth.

But some of the strongest resistance is coming from American children and adolescents themselves. When Brandi Thompson's Mississippi high school removed the deep-fried chicken and pork chops from the lunch menu and replaced them with potatoes that are baked instead of cooked in fat, the move didn't sit well.

"I understand the part about us being healthy, but the food they cook, we don't eat, because everybody can't cooked baked food the same. And it just don't taste right," she told health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser shortly after the initiative started.

Blogger Eddie Gehman Kohan has covered every twist, turn and shake of Let's Move! for the past two years on her Obama Foodorama blog. She's currently traveling with the first lady on a national tour to celebrate the anniversary. But she separated from the press pack for a few moments to answer our top questions on this massive program and its efforts to slim down America's youth.

What have been some of the major milestones in the past two years -- the indications that this thing is making a difference?

Gehman Kohan: Well broadly, for any first lady who has had a "first lady campaign," she is the only one to have such huge private-sector commitments. It's really an astonishing series of commitments that she's gotten from the private sector, where they're really serious and largely scaled and can impact millions of people. There's a commitment from Darden Restaurants -- which owns chains like Olive Garden and Red Lobster -- to revamp their children's menus and some other menu items for the campaign. Of course, there are large-scale commitments from Wal-Mart and Walgreens, which have both agreed to build or revamp stores in what USDA identifies as "food deserts" -- places where fresh and healthy foods, primarily produce, are not necessarily available.

And there are a huge number of other private-sector commitments, like from childcare facilities, including YMCA and Bright Horizons. These facilities can help implement early childhood interventions that will help prevent obesity right at the get-go. Mrs. Obama has also made progress with "Let's Move Faith and Communities," a subcomponent that brings in religious groups and community groups to participate in "Let's Move! activities. And the Healthier U.S. Schools Challenge, which is a USDA program that rewards schools for best-case scenarios in nutrition and fitness activities.

How much actual progress has been made so far? Are kids actually getting healthier?

Gehman Kohan: After two years, it's too early to point to any kind of statistical analysis in a childhood obesity reduction. Kids who are running around and moving and eating better can't help but be healthier. But most of what has been accomplished is a huge paradigm shift in the public's awareness of the relationship between food and health. And the coordination has been significant: All of these groups that existed before are now coordinated and mobilized and led by the White House while still operating independently. Clearly, there were plenty of food, gardening, health and physical fitness activities in the U.S. before this. But Mrs. Obama's efforts with the "Let's Move!" campaign has really given these groups a focal point while also bringing high-profile attention to the subject as crucially important.

You've written in your blog that "observers seem to misunderstand the scope and focus of Let's Move!" What exactly do you mean by that?

Gehman Kohan: This initiative is generational. It was designed with the intent that children who born in 2010 -- when this was launched -- will grow up in a very different food culture and a very different physical fitness culture. Take for example one of the long-term components -- the school lunch legislation. It is taking a couple of years to roll out, but when children born in 2010 are in kindergarten five years from now, the theory is they'll be walking into a school fitness and food environment that is profoundly different than the environment experienced by kindergartners today. They will have completely different school lunch standards and hopefully their schools will be focusing on more physical activity. And so the crucial importance of starting children out young is they won't grow up already suffering from obesity and all the related diseases.

Let's talk more about school lunches. How is this initiative actually changing policy?

Gehman Kohan: Federal law requires that certain things need to be served or cannot be served in the cafeterias. That's through the National School Lunch Program and the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Every few years, Congress has to pass what's called "child nutrition reauthorization," and so the version that came along during the Let's Move! campaign, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, is what changed school lunches in the U.S. It's the first significant change to menus in 15 years, and it's the first time in about 30 years the government is giving more for the federal reimbursement rate -- the amount they pay schools to serve the lunches. It also doubles the amount of fruits and vegetables that will be served on a weekly basis, it requires that water be served, that all milk be low- or nonfat, and that all grains are whole grain. And it sets high and low limits for calories, so portion sizes are controlled, depending on the age of the students being served. These changes impact 32 million children.

Are we seeing that kind of change in terms of school gym programs, in getting kids to actually move in school?

Gehman Kohan: Well the schools that participate in the Healthier U.S. Schools Challenge have improved gym components and physical activity. But generally, physical activity in schools has fallen a lot to the wayside for multiple reasons. Many don't have the staff to watch the kids on the playground, some have needed to reduce or eliminate PE because they've needed the students to study for standardized tests tied to state funding. So this recently passed legislation has a wellness policy but it doesn't mandate physical activity. More generally, every major sports association has joined in some high-profile way. They're working in their communities, encouraging after-school programs.

Let's turn to some of the criticism. Not everyone's completely happy with the campaign, right?

Gehman Kohan: By far, the Wal-Mart partnership has caused the most criticism. Wal-Mart is a flashpoint for controversy. It has this reputation for putting local businesses out of business when it moves into communities. Some people say Wal-Mart is using the first lady, that the company isn't serious about its commitment and is just aligning with the first lady because they're trying to build more stores. Labor didn't like the Wal-Mart partnership either because it's a non-union company. Even when Michael Pollan named Mrs. Obama the "Most Powerful Foodie in the World" in Forbes magazine, he said he was worried she was being duped by Wal-Mart and that the company's pledge to focus on "better-for-you processed foods" was really not what should be going on within the rubric of the campaign - that it should be a total focus on fresh, unprocessed foods.

Has there been much criticism of the broader message?

Gehman Kohan: Let's Move! has been pointed to by a lot of critics as an example of big government intervening and the Obama administration wanting to expand the role of government to the point that it controls what American citizens eat. For its part, the campaign says it's about giving people choice and educating them about food and nutrition and physical activity and allowing them to have access to a wide range of choices. There's also been the concern from a lot of people that focusing on childhood obesity would make children hyper-conscious of their body weight. Mrs. Obama always says, "It's not about how you look, it's about how you feel," which is the ultimate message. But that brings up a tricky subject -- there's no way to end an obesity epidemic if people aren't losing weight. So this is one of those murky areas of the campaign that is not much discussed.

If the president isn't re-elected in the fall and this all ends within a year, what's the implication for that?

Gehman Kohan: Well this three-day trip will actually be the last grand tour if the president doesn't get re-elected. But Partnership for a Healthier America - a separate nonprofit that was launched in conjunction with the campaign - was founded to ensure that "Let's Move!" continues on long after Mrs. Obama is not in the White House, whether it's next year or five years from now. Regardless, she's so passionate about this subject that I think she'll continue to work on this issue in some capacity for the rest of her life.

Big Banks, 49 States Reach $25 Billion Deal Over Foreclosure Abuses

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:03:00 EDT

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

RAY SUAREZ: After long months of negotiating, 49 states joined an agreement today over foreclosure abuses.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the deal in Washington.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: It is the largest joint federal-state civil settlement in the history of this nation.

RAY SUAREZ: The news came even as foreclosed homes still litter the landscape, casualties of the housing bubble that burst in 2008. Many people could not make their payments and were forced out.

Many others have struggled to keep up, even as the value of their homes fell far below what they owe. But Attorney General Holder said the $25 billion deal is designed to give relief to homeowners and to hold banks accountable for abusive practices.

ERIC HOLDER: We saw that, far too often, servicers pushed borrowers into foreclosure, even though federal regulations require the servicers to try other alternatives first. These failures didn't just hurt borrowers who might have been able to afford modified mortgages. They fueled the downward spiral of our economy and of communities nationwide.

RAY SUAREZ: Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial are the five major mortgage lenders who've agreed to reduce loan amounts for nearly one million households.

And they'll send $2,000 checks to 750,000 Americans who were improperly foreclosed on. Under the deal, the lenders are protected from many civil lawsuits tied to the foreclosure process. But states can still pursue criminal cases, including those tied to original lending practices.

The settlement was hashed out over the last year-and-a-half between the banks and state attorneys general.

TOM MILLER, Iowa attorney general: This agreement has more things to help homeowners than anything that we have seen before and probably ever will see again.

JOHN SUTHERS, Colorado attorney general: The attorney generals realize this settlement is very, very much in the interest of their state and the citizens of their states.

RAY SUAREZ: Between 2007 and early 2012, roughly four million American families lost their homes to foreclosure. And some housing activists say today's deal only scratches the surface.

Gordon Whitman is with PICO National Network, a faith-based group.

GORDON WHITMAN, PICO National Network: So, it's a start, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to what we need to get to. And we believe that we will over the next two to three years, one to two years, get to the point where we have that level of $300 billion in principal reduction.

RAY SUAREZ: President Obama acknowledged today the deal is just one step toward fixing the housing industry.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: No action, no matter how meaningful, is going to, by itself, entirely heal the housing market. But this settlement is a start.

And we're going to make sure that the banks live up to their end of bargain. If they don't, we've set up an independent inspector, a monitor that has the power to make sure they pay exactly what they agreed to pay, plus a penalty if they fail to act.

RAY SUAREZ: Oklahoma was the only state not to sign onto the deal. It reached a separate agreement with the banks.

JEFFREY BROWN: We're joined now by two state attorneys general who became key players in this deal. Eric Schneiderman of New York is a Democrat, and Tom Horne of Arizona a Republican.

Eric Schneiderman, I will start with you.

We have seen a number of attempts to respond to the housing market crisis. How important do you think this one is?

ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN, New York attorney general: Oh, I think this is certainly the most significant step so far.

But as the president said today, and as you just replayed, this is just a step towards the kind of accountability for the folks who blew up the economy, the kind of meaningful relief for homeowners and investors that's required, and putting in place of a set of rules so this never happens again.

We're on a path to restore the housing market, to write down principal for homeowners and to ensure that there's one set of rules for everyone -- important step, but a step on a longer path.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Tom Horne, let me -- yours has been a very hard-hit state, of course. Specifically, who do you see this helping and how?

TOM HORNE, Arizona attorney general: Well, the primary beneficiaries will be those who are in their homes and are current, have paid their payments for at least a year, but who face difficulty doing that in the future in the full amount, but they can pay less than the full amount.

And the largest component of the settlement would give money to reduce principal payments and some also to refinance and reduce interest payments for these people, so they'll be able to stay in their home. So that's very important for them. It's also better for the lenders, because the present value to them of those reduced payments is going to be a lot more than what they would get if they proceeded to foreclose.

So it's a win for the person who gets to stay in his home or her home. It's a win for the lender, and it's certainly a win for the economy. In the case of Arizona, $1.6 billion will come into our economy to prop up a very important part of our economy, the housing market.

JEFFREY BROWN: Eric Schneiderman, just to help people, again, to try to make this very concrete, what does someone have to do or what kind of position do they have to be in to qualify for this help?

ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: Well, there is a variety, and some of it varies from state to state.

The first relief we're going to see here in New York, where we have a smaller portion of folks who have underwater mortgages than General Horne does out in Arizona, first relief they're going to see is that we obtain $136 million that's going to go primarily towards legal services, housing counseling and programs to prevent people from being foreclosed on.

The second level of relief that's going to take longer to implement is that the banks are required to reach out to people with underwater mortgages, whose mortgages are more expensive than the value of the homes right now, which is what General Horne was referring to, and offer them a chance to either refinance or reduce the principal.

Not everyone is going to get a deal, but there's a requirement that we have put on the banks that they're going to make those solicitations. So people should be aware of that. We've set up contacts in all the regional offices at the New York state attorney general. I know some of my counterparts are doing the same thing.

We'll be providing the messages to the public. But the first step is to try and prevent foreclosures where they're not warranted. The second step is the program of principal reduction and loan modification that's going to be going into effect.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, Tom Horne, we heard the housing advocate -- and you're hearing it all over the place today -- refer to this as a -- quote -- "drop in the bucket."

I wonder, do you think he is wrong? If you look at $25 billion, quite small, compared to the $700 billion in negative equity out there, people getting $2,000 compared to the value of the homes that they have lost in many cases, is that fellow wrong in saying this is just a drop in the bucket?

TOM HORNE: Well, first of all, the $2,000, plus or minus, will go to people who have already been foreclosed on. They don't have to give up anything for that. They still have their rights to bring lawsuits if they were badly treated by the servicers at the time.

They don't have to give up those rights. All they have to do is say that they were badly treated by the servicer, and they get the $2,000. The other sums, we're talking about $25 billion. You will remember Everett Dirksen once said, a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, it's real money.

This is very significant. If we had proceeded with the lawsuits, it would have been about four or five years before we go through the lawsuit and the appeals, and if we had done better, that would have been good, but we could have done worse, and that would have been a terrible thing, to have done worse and lost four or five years, when people were thrown out of their homes, where otherwise they would have been saved with their mortgages. So I think this was a very prudent agreement.

We in Arizona didn't actually agree until 11:00 last night on an agreement that was announced at 8:00 this morning because we had some special things we had to work out with Bank of America. So we negotiated very hard. But in the end, I think this is a very prudent agreement as a settlement of what otherwise would have been lawsuits that might have brought us more, but might have brought us less.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, Eric Schneiderman, you held out for a long time on this as well. Explain what your concerns were.

ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: Well, my concern, really, is reflected in the comment that General Horne just made.

I was concerned about giving up claims. And it's very important to understand that homeowners still do have the right to go into court themselves. And part of the provision of legal services for people is that people -- individuals that were wronged still can seek damages. We have not given up their claims.

And my concern all along was that we not release claims that haven't been investigated and that the settlement be limited to issues like robo-signing, release of claims for misconduct and foreclosure proceedings.

When I got involved in the negotiations a year ago, the banks were really pushing for a release of the broad misconduct, the securities fraud and tax fraud and other conduct that actually melted down the American economy in 2008.

We have preserved all of those claims. And President Obama in the State of the Union announced that we are, in fact, going to have a joint state-federal working group to conduct a full investigation of those claims in a more comprehensive, coordinated way than we have ever done. And I'm one of the co-chairs.

So the important thing in evaluating a settlement is partly to look at how much money you get. And it's true this is a very small portion of the negative equity that's out there. It's a step, but just a step on the path. But, in evaluating it, you have to look at what claims you're giving up. What are you getting for what you're giving up?

And, in this case, I'm confident we held out for and fought to have the claims preserved that really give us the most leverage to go back to the folks that blew up the American economy and get more meaningful relief for both homeowners and investors that were hurt in that debacle.

JEFFREY BROWN: And are you -- just to stay with you, are you confident as well that these practices, the very kinds of things you were just talking about and that caused the problem in the first place, are you confident now that those have ended?

ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: Well, certainly in terms of what's going on in the securities market, those have ended. And there was a response to that with Dodd-Frank. The federal government has passed new rules.

We now have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau being set up to deal with some of these problems. I'm confident that, if we continue to push forward with that, we can put into effect prudent regulations, so that the overwhelming majority of folks in the financial services sector who just want to play by the rules and make money for themselves and their clients can prosper.

But the race to the bottom that took place in 2005, 2006 and 2007, when there were packages of mortgages that just never should have been made and securities that never should have been sold, that kind of thing has to be prevented in the future. We preserved all our claims to go back after the folks who committed any breach of law, whether it's tax fraud, securities fraud, investment fraud or insurance fraud, during that era, and our working group is very aggressively pursuing those claims.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. All right, and let me . . .

TOM HORNE: If I could add to . . .

JEFFREY BROWN: Yeah, go ahead.

TOM HORNE: May I add to that?

JEFFREY BROWN: Yeah.

TOM HORNE: An important part of this settlement, which is dealing with misconduct by people who are servicing the mortgages, the five biggest banks, is a reform of the methods used by the servicers.

So, you had abuses such as one person from the bank worked out with the homeowner a modification. And so he was making reduced payments. And the homeowner was making the reduced payments, doing everything he was supposed to do, and then someone else from the bank would foreclose, and he'd come home and he'd find, even though he was doing everything he was supposed to do, his house was foreclosed on.

Those practices are being reformed, so that you have one person that you're dealing with, so that if they deny the modification, you can appeal it, a number of other reforms in the way these things are implemented. And that is going to be monitored. And there are strict penalties for not living up to the new guidelines.

So, in addition to the $25 billion, which I think is very significant and important for our economy, there are significant reforms in the way the loans are -- services, and it does away with a lot of abuses with teeth behind that.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, Attorney Generals Tom Horne of Arizona and Eric Schneiderman of New York, thank you both very much.

TOM HORNE: Thanks for having us.

ERIC SCHNEIDERMAN: Thanks, Jeff.

Does Greater Equality Make Societies Stronger?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:50:00 EDT

Graphic by the PBS NewsHour, based on the cover of "The Spirit Level."

Paul Solman answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news here on his Making Sen$e page. Here's Thursday's query:

John Naghshineh: Mr. Solman, could you please talk to Richard Wilkinson or Kate Pickett about income inequality? They wrote the book, "The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger." According to them, social mobility tends to be stronger in more equal societies, which contradicts Richard Epstein's views about inequality being an incentive for growth. They also show greater equality correlates with higher life expectancy rates, lower crime rates, fewer dropouts, teenage births, educational outcomes and much more. You can guess how the United States fares on these charts up against other economically advanced nations. Their research couldn't be more relevant to our times!

Paul Solman: But we did. We've run two segments from our interview with Richard Wilkinson:

Inequality Hurts: The Unhealthy Side Effects of Economic Disparity

EmbedVideo(1633, 620, 386);

In Ohio, How Two Counties' Economic Paths Diverged Over 30 Years

EmbedVideo(114, 620, 386);

This entry is cross-posted on the Rundown- NewsHour's blog of news and insight.

Follow @PaulSolman

Russians Drill Into Ancient Lake in Coldest Spot on Earth

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:17:00 EDT

After decades drilling through more than two miles of ice in the coldest spot on Earth, Russian scientists announced this week that they reached their goal: a subglacial lake the size of Lake Ontario, which has been sealed off from the world for as long as 20 million years.

So much has been reported on the mechanics of the drilling, the grueling conditions the researchers faced, and the microbial life forms they hope to find submerged in Antarctica's Lake Vostok, we thought it was worth wrapping up some of the best coverage, using Storify after the jump:

src="http://storify.com/newshour/russians-drill-into-mystery-lake.js?header=false&border=false">

Culture Canvas

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:43:00 EDT

A roundup of the week's arts and culture headlines.

The nation of Qatar purchased a Paul Cezanne painting, "The Card Players," for more than $250 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of art, via Vanity Fair.

Uruguay's first biennial art show will open next fall, via The Art Newspaper.

Artists and intellectuals in Hungary are concerned about increasing tension between the government and cultural institutions, via The Art Newspaper.

La Scala fired a ballerina for alleging high rates of anorexia in the company during an interview, via The Los Angeles Times.

A nylon star designed to improve air quality was selected as the winner of the 13th Young Architects Program. The nylon is treated with a chemical spray that neutralizes pollutants in the surrounding air. The design, by architecture firm HWKN, will take its place in the courtyard of MOMA PS1, via The New York Times.

Laura H. Kahn discusses the relationship between science fiction and public understanding of scientific ideas.

The Eisenhower family objects to the designs of the forthcoming national memorial to the former president. Famed architect Frank Gehry designed the plans.

Paintings, jewelry and fashion belonging to the late Elizabeth Taylor sold for more than $183 million, Christie's auction house said Thursday, via the Associated Press. The most expensive item was Vincent van Gogh's landscape "Vue de l'asile et de la Chapelle de Remy," which sold for $16 million.

John T. Sargent, who oversaw Doubleday & Company's expansion from a family-controlled book publisher to an industry giant, died at age 87.

British science fiction writer John Christopher, author of the popular "Tripods" trilogy, died at age 89.

Spy novelist Dorothy Gilman, author of "The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax," died at age 88.

The Daily Frame

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:56:00 EDT

Click to enlarge.

Kalamandalam Radhakrishnan touches up his make-up before his Ottanthullal performance Thursday at the Soorya Festival in Ahmedabad, India. Ottanthullal is a type of classical performing art from Kerala, India, featuring dance and storytelling. Photo by Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images.

Students Learn a Trade in Afghanistan Hotspot

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EDT

In an open, dusty part of southern Afghanistan where fighting between Taliban forces and NATO troops is commonplace, and jobs are scarce, an organization is working to train Afghans to make them more employable.

The program seems simple enough -- recruit Afghans, supply them with job training and send them back to their communities to make a living.

But the location -- in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold and active insurgency against NATO troops -- makes it more complicated.

The program is called Invest in Helmand and is run by Mercy Corps, a Portland, Ore.-based group with a branch in the UK.

The group started Invest in March 2011 and chose to work in conflict-susceptible Helmand because that's "where there was most significant demand," said David Haines, Afghanistan country director for Mercy Corps.

"We were approached by community members and shuras (local councils) to do something about the lack of training opportunities -- there are no government training facilities throughout the province."

Also, Britain's Department for International Development, which helps fund the program, wanted to focus there because of the presence of British troops, he said.

The Invest program training includes mobile phone, computer and engine repair, carpentry, metal work, embroidery and tailoring. Training sites are in Helmand's capital Lashkar Gah, Gereshk and most recently Marjah.

Although the program is not even a year old, it has undergone some substantial changes.

"If I look at what we're delivering now and I look back to the proposal 12 months ago, it's like night and day, because obviously you learn a huge amount," said Haines.

For example, Mercy Corps learned that students tended to stay for the duration of the course when they were recruited and referred to the program by their shuras and sponsored by the communities.

"It means there's an undertaking on the shuras' part that they will support the students to start the business and the students are much more likely to stay for the duration of the course because they've raised an expectation within their own communities that it's a privileged position to be put forward to these courses. And so they have to make the most of it," Haines said.

It also removes Mercy Corps from the picture somewhat, which is a good thing, he said. "There's a switch from Mercy Corps directly implementing something in the community to facilitating people already in the community to do the same thing. It makes things a lot more sustainable and culturally appropriate."

Another big change is more women are getting involved.

Mercy Corps specifically started with male students in order to gain traction within the community, demonstrate the benefits of the program and gain credibility, said Haines.

"People, in the rural areas particularly, are always concerned that either we're trying to brainwash people politically as an international organization, or convert people to Christianity."

After about seven months, the Invest program started training women, which required a separate location, and all-female teachers and security guards.

In addition, because it's a conservative area with concerns about security, families were reluctant to have their daughters, sisters and wives go outside without a male relative. So Mercy Corps provides buses to take them to and from classes, said Haines.

The program now has 700 female students out of a total 8,400 and hopes to increase that number.

Students range in age from 15 to 60. About 70 percent are illiterate, and many come from conflict communities, said Haines.

"Most don't have a formal education and would be employed as laborers in fields or construction. They sacrifice the income that they would be getting normally to study for three to six months."

Since the start of the program, about 65 percent have gotten jobs or started their own successful businesses, he said.

One of the most attractive features to students is that the teachers come from the private sector within the local community.

In Marjah, for example, Mercy Corps looked for carpenters who were the busiest at local bazaars and made deals with them to serve as instructors. The carpenters get a free workforce; the students get trained and boost their employability by saying they trained under a well-known craftsman in the community.

The program also provides students with another economic option, rather than joining an insurgency for the money. "A big chunk of people who join the insurgency do so for economic reasons -- it's not ideological or religious or political -- it's purely economics," Haines said.

The interaction students have with one another also helps lessen tensions, he added, since they are exposed to different social and economic groups. "The students just learn to get along, basically."

View all of our Social Entrepreneurship stories and follow us on Twitter.

Romney Readies His Conservative Pitch

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:08:00 EDT

Mitt Romney campaigns in Colorado Springs last week. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Mitt Romney is taking a break from the campaign trail, no doubt preparing for his big moment Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

The math and the calendar ahead, not to mention his organization, suggest the former Massachusetts governor remains the favorite to capture the GOP nomination to challenge President Obama in November. As the weeks and contests stretch out, and with Romney's three rivals saying they won't let up, the speech could be a big moment.

Low turnout in early Republican primaries and caucuses and a continued lack of enthusiasm for the GOP's candidates haven't helped Romney's case. Could CPAC be his moment to retake control of the party's steering wheel?

Jonathan Martin and Manu Raju write Thursday about Republicans who are worried Romney needs to "step it up," as Politico put it in the headline. From the piece, which includes frank quotes from members of Congress:

The admonition came from outspoken conservatives and members of Congress who typically stay out of party spats.

"There is not exactly Romney-mania right now," Senate GOP Whip Jon Kyl told POLITICO, adding that the former Massachusetts governor "absolutely" must shore up the weaknesses with the GOP base that were on such vivid display Tuesday.

"Playing it safe, which Romney tends to do, is not going to get it for him," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a 2008 Romney supporter and a leading voice of his party's conservative bloc, who called the results this week "a signal."

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), who rode a tea party wave to defeat veteran Sen. Russ Feingold two years ago, said conservatives believe "we're losing this country" and want "a strong messenger carrying a strong message."

"Gov. Romney should probably be a little concerned," Johnson said. Asked if the front-runner has work to do with the party base, the freshman conservative said: "Last night's results definitely confirmed that."

The Washington Times' Ralph Z. Hallow writes about the conservative movement's expectations for the annual gathering, and what it might mean for Romney.

From Ralph's story:

Year after year at these meetings, CPAC attendees have grumbled about the failure of some of the elected Republican officials who profess conservative ideals to adhere to them once in power. Those activists, who keep coming and keep bringing recruits, say they aren't giving up on finding politicians whose deeds will more closely resemble their words.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who has won the straw poll at CPAC two years in a row, won't be attending. Pressure will be on for Romney to knock it out of the park and remind the heart of the Republican Party why he's the guy they want to challenge Mr. Obama this fall.

Team NewsHour will be on hand at CPAC, so make sure to follow us.

CULTURE CLASH

The Obama administration's decision last month to require most employers, including religious-affiliated hospitals and schools, to provide contraception through their employee health insurance plans has revealed stark divisions, including inside the White House.

Bloomberg's Mike Dorning and Margaret Talev report that President Obama sided with a group of female advisers not to limit the health care mandate, despite warnings from Vice President Joe Biden and former chief of staff William Daley that the move could turn off Catholic voters:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic and a two-term governor of Kansas, was joined by several female Obama advisers in urging against a broad exemption for religious organizations. To do so would leave too many women without coverage and sap the enthusiasm for Obama among women's rights advocates, they said, according to the people, who spoke about the deliberations on condition of anonymity.

Vice President Joe Biden and then-White House chief of staff Bill Daley, also Catholics, warned that the mandate would be seen as a government intrusion on religious institutions. Even moderate Catholic voters in battleground states might be alienated, they warned, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

Polling conducted by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake suggests that Catholic voters might not be the part of the electorate the administration has most to worry about. The survey found that a majority of Catholics -- 53 percent -- said the opposition to the mandate by the U.S. Conferences of Catholic Bishops made no difference in their views of the Affordable Care Act, according to a copy provided to The Morning Line by a source familiar with the data.

That said, the administration has plenty on its hands when it comes to Republican opposition to the mandate.

On Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, threatened congressional action if the administration followed through on its decision. "If the president does not reverse the department's attack on religious freedom, then the Congress, acting on behalf of the American people and the Constitution we are sworn to uphold and defend, must," Rep. Boehner said. "This attack by the federal government on religious freedom in our country cannot stand and will not stand."

(For more on the split in Congress, be sure to check out the Roll Call piece, "New Chapter in Culture Wars," written by John Stanton and Meredith Shiner.)

Liberal groups, including the Nurse Alliance of SEIU Healthcare and Protect Your Care, plan to get local reporters in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida writing about "the importance of contraceptive coverage" within the health care law with a series of conference calls Thursday.

The issue has also become a focus of the Republican presidential campaign, with Romney criticizing the president during a stop in Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon.

"This kind of attack on religion and on our first freedom, our right to worship and believe as we choose ... this is wrong," Romney said. "If I am president of the United States, I will restore and protect our religious liberty in this great country."

The White House has signaled a willingness to find a compromise with religious institutions on the mandate, but even that action could bring political risks, as any move to restrict access to contraceptives might displease women voters, who supported Mr. Obama over John McCain by 13 points in the 2008 election.

SANTORUM SERVERS OVERLOAD

Interest in Rick Santorum was so high on Wednesday, it took nearly 20 minutes for a call on his 888 campaign number to be patched to a human being.

"We've been that busy, getting way more than the normal amount of calls," an operator told The Morning Line, noting she was one of 40 people frantically taking donations on the line.

John Brabender, Santorum's longtime media strategist, appeared on Wednesday's NewsHour and said there's little time to stop and savor the former Pennsylvania senator's victory. He said calls and donations were "going through the roof," noting that "we had to add more servers" to meet demand.

Brabender, who had spent all day filming in Pittsburgh, where Santorum claims his roots, wouldn't tell Judy Woodruff what kind of television spot was in the works, but he gave a hint: "I was here shooting a commercial today. I'm not telling you any more than that."

Watch the entire interview and our segment on the Tuesday election's here.

The New York Times' Jim Rutenberg and Nicholas Confessore look at Foster Friess, the man who has given $331,000 to the pro-Santorum super PAC, the Red, White and Blue Fund.

From the story:

Michael Biundo, Mr. Santorum's campaign manager, said the Red, White and Blue Fund had been helpful not just with television commercials but also with a phone bank operation that helped drive Santorum-friendly voters to the polls in Denver. While he said the campaign was receiving an influx of new donations after Tuesday's victories, "anytime anybody wants to help us, we'll take it."

2012 LINE ITEMS

Hotline's Reid Wilson reported on Twitter (@hotlinereid) that the Obama campaign's first ad about energy ran between Jan. 19 and Jan. 25. There were about 5,000 spots running in 25 markets, costing $1.4 million, he wrote.
Politico's Maggie Haberman and Reid Epstein look at Romney's return to CPAC, four years after he announced his withdrawal from the 2008 GOP race at the annual conservative confab.
Our partners at Patchwork Nation write about how bad a night Tuesday was for Romney.
Paul announces a Valentine's Day "money bomb" and tells his supporters in an email, "One thing has become clear after these early contests -- it's anybody's race."
Ed Koch, who led an anti-Obama push over the president's moves on Israel last year, now tells Ben Smith he "has been hearing fewer and fewer complaints about Barack Obama."
Obama campaign pollster Joel Benenson writes a memo gloating about low turnout in the early GOP contests. "The only state thus far with a significant rise in Republican turnout was South Carolina, where Romney was trounced by Newt Gingrich," he writes. He also argues that "Romney's effort to woo conservative voters is hurting him with independents."
The Democratic National Committee posts a new web video suggesting Romney is beholden to special interests. Watch it here.

TOP TWEETS

Gallup polling shows economic confidence continues to surge following jobs report. Closing in on best level since '07.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) February 9, 2012

src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

How Mark Zuckerberg, using the Like button, appeared to endorse #MittRomney gaw.kr/xgKmVy
— Jennifer Preston (@NYT_JenPreston) February 9, 2012

src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

DC Food trucks need you! Pls take just a minute to help all of us remain in business! fb.me/19Q1KctUC
— DC Empanadas (@DCEmpanadas) February 9, 2012

src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">

OUTSIDE THE LINES

The New York Times reports on the "broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market's downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses." The NewsHour will have more on Thursday's program.
The NewsHour's Gwen Ifill spoke with Washington Post reporter Kimberly Kindy about the paper's year-long investigation looking at how members of Congress have steered taxpayer money close to home.
"A growing number of Republicans want to lift the earmark ban that has been embraced by President Obama and Congress," The Hill's Alexander Bolton writes.
A pair of polls released Wednesday show Congress' dismal popularity hasn't gotten any better. Gallup showed the approval rating for Congress at a record-low 10 percent. Even though Congress has only been in session 15 days this year, its approval rating still managed a 3 percent drop since the last Gallup poll in January. And a new Rasmussen survey found 43 percent of Americans believe "a group of people selected at random from the phone book [would] do a better job addressing the nation's problems than the current Congress."
Roll Call's Kyle Trygstad looks ahead to Senate races in 2014. Hint: It looks good for the GOP.
Judy Woodruff (@judywoodruff) writes about the state of agriculture in America.
Washington state passes a measure legalizing gay marriage.
The Texas Tribune writes that Gov. Rick Perry was the butt of several jokes at Wednesday night's annual congressional dinner hosted by the Washington Press Club Foundation. (Disclosure: Bellantoni is on the foundation's board.)

NewsHour politics desk assistant Alex Bruns contributed to this report.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the Ohio Newspaper Association Convention in Columbus at 11 a.m.
Rick Santorum holds a pair of Oklahoma rallies: in Oklahoma City at 10 a.m. and Tulsa at 2:30 p.m.
Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have no public events scheduled Thursday.

All future events can be found on our Political Calendar:

For more political coverage, visit our politics page.

Questions or comments? Email Christina Bellantoni at cbellantoni-at-newshour-dot-org.

Follow the politics team on Twitter: @cbellantoni, @burlij, @elizsummers, @quinnbowman.