The Rundown News Blog

Does the U.S. Tax Imports?

2012-02-07T16:21:35-04:00

The Arsos container ship is unloaded at the Port of Miami in Florida; Photo by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Marc Whitehead sends the follow-up question below after reading Paul's thoughts on tariffs from early January: If we put a 15 percent tariff on all imported goods, how much money would that tax generate each year?

Question: Paul, I don't think you are calculating 15 percent on all imports, only an increase on goods that are currently taxed. I believe that almost all imports are currently un-tariffed. What do you say?

Paul Solman: Good point, Marc. But it doesn't much affect my withering conclusion in the post of Jan. 5: that wiping out the federal debt and "entitlement" obligations by hiking import duties (aka tariffs) is a non-starter.

After reading your question I went online, and have now seen estimates as high as 67 percent for the share of imports that's tax-free. That might require a tripling of the numbers I estimated on Jan. 5. But even if we were to do so, the U.S. would still fall hundreds of billions of dollars short of covering our annual budget deficit with tariffs. Not to mention looming Social Security and Medicare shortfalls. To rid us of all our obligations? I stand by my recent bottom line: "we're surely talking tariffs that would be many multiples of the price."

This entry is cross-posted on the Making Sen$e page, where correspondent Paul Solman answers your economic and business questions. Follow Paul on Twitter.

Follow @PaulSolman

Italian Prime Minister: Eurozone Crisis Revives 'Prejudices' in Europe

2012-02-07T12:03:39-04:00

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said Tuesday that the eurozone crisis has brought up "old phantoms about prejudices between" North and South Europe. View a preview clip above, and watch the full interview on Tuesday's NewsHour.

"The eurozone crisis has indeed brought about quite a bit of misunderstandings and the re-emergence of old phantoms about prejudices between the North, the South of Europe, and a lot of mutual resentment," said Monti.

"And it is very, very important that we all take this with great attention in order to avoid that something that was meant to be the culminating point of the European construction -- namely, the single currency -- turns out to be, through psychological negative effects, a factor of disintegration of Europe."

As for Italy specifically, Monti said he tries to avoid backlashes to EU-imposed changes to Italians' way of life "by always presenting the necessary sacrifices that Italians have to go through not as an imposition from Brussels or Germany or the European Central Bank, but rather as a necessary step that Italians have to undertake also at the suggestion of Europe, basically for their own interests, for the interests of ourselves and of future generations of Italians."

Monti sat down with Margaret Warner on the eve of his trip to the United States and meetings with President Obama at the White House.

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

Proposition 8 Unconstitutional, Court Upholds in Ruling

2012-02-07T10:41:57-04:00

A rally to celebrate the ruling to overturn Proposition 8, Aug. 4, 2010, in San Francisco. That ruling was appealed by supporters of Proposition 8. Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit upheld the original ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a ruling that Proposition 8, the 2008 ban on same-sex marriage in California, is unconstitutional Tuesday.

"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the ruling.

The National Organization For Marriage, which supports Proposition 8, condemned the ruling in a press release.

"The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the most overturned circuit in the country, and Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the author of today's absurd ruling is the most overturned federal judge in America," NOM chairman John Eastman said in the press release. "Today's ruling is a perfect setup for this case to be taken by the U.S. Supreme Court, where I am confident it will be reversed."

Read the full court ruling after the jump:

#Prop8 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court

Reaction has been swift on Twitter, including a tweet from GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich condemning the ruling.

Court of Appeals overturning CA's Prop 8 another example of an out of control judiciary. Let's end judicial supremacy bit.ly/nyblQ7
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 7, 2012

The ruling will have far-reaching implications. The case will likely reach the U.S. Supreme Court, SCOTUSblog reports .

The development does not mean that new weddings will occur right away, The Los Angeles Times explains in a helpful Q&A.

The news comes a year after the court heard arguments that were aired live online. Watch excerpts of those arguments and look back on key moments in the battle over Prop 8 here.

For full coverage and analysis of the ruling and history of Proposition 8, follow news from Northern California's KQED here. Look through past reporting and court documents here.

PBS NewsHour will have coverage of the ruling on the show. NOM chairman John Eastman and David Boies, one of the two lead attorneys who has been arguing to overturn Prop 8, will discuss both sides of the news tonight. Watch live online at 6 p.m. ET here.

For even more background, click through a timeline of the history of same-sex marriage in California from KQED.

Same-Sex Marriage in California on Dipity.

Tune in to NewsHour live online at 6 p.m. ET for more on the ruling and what's next here.

Obama Plays the Super PAC Game, Endorses Priorities USA

2012-02-07T09:11:45-04:00

President Obama greets the audience after delivering remarks on the economy last week in Falls Church, Va. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

President Obama's campaign is getting into the super PAC business.

The president's re-election team announced Monday night that it will openly support Priorities USA Action, a super PAC run by former White House aides Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney to "fill a hole in our side." Officials said that while Mr. Obama still opposes the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision that opened the floodgates to super PACs, he wants his donors to know he won't stay out of the game.

"[T]his cycle, our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina wrote in a post at BarackObama.com. "We will not play by two sets of rules."

"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," Messina wrote. That means senior campaign officials and some White House and Cabinet officials will speak at Priorities USA fundraisers but "won't be soliciting contributions." Mr. Obama, the first lady and Vice President Joe Biden will not get involved.

Messina also emailed campaign supporters detailing how Republican super PACs spent $18 million on attack ads last year. "We decided to do this because we can't afford for the work you're doing in your communities, and the grassroots donations you give to support it, to be destroyed by hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads," he wrote.

Burton sent an email to the Priorities USA mailing list with a request for donations and a link to a New York Times story outlining President Obama's decision. "The new policy was presented to the campaign's National Finance Committee in a call Monday evening," Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny reported in that story.

RACE TO 1,144

Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri will get their turn in the spotlight Tuesday, and while the GOP presidential candidates are competing for victories (and the momentum that comes with them), no delegates will actually be awarded based on Tuesday's results.

Colorado's 36 delegates will be awarded at district conventions from late-March through mid-April. Minnesota's 40 delegates will be selected at district conventions between April 14-21. And Missouri's primary is not only non-binding, it is "not recognized as being a part of any delegate allocation or selection process," according to the Republican National Committee.

The process for choosing the Show Me State's 52 delegates will start with precinct caucuses held on March 17. The estimated cost for Tuesday's "beauty contest" in Missouri? $7 million.

Newt Gingrich is not on the ballot in Missouri after he decided against paying the $1,000 filing fee, contending the contest did not count for delegates. Voting in the state starts at 6 a.m. CT and goes until 7 p.m. CT.

The Minnesota caucuses begin at 7 p.m. CT, while the action in Colorado gets underway at 7 p.m. MT. The Colorado GOP has a helpful FAQ section for caucus-goers on its website.

So, with no delegates at stake, what's the point of all this?

It's all about the candidates attempting to wrest some momentum away from GOP front-runner Mitt Romney. Team Santorum thinks the former Pennsylvania senator has a chance after looking at a handful of polls. But it's a long way to 1,144.

The Washington Post has a snapshot of the delegate count, but keep in mind that these numbers will not change after Tuesday night.

Politico's Charles Mathesian and Rachel Van Dongen offer their five things to watch for in Tuesday night's results.

The NewsHour will look at the delegate math this week.

ALL ABOUT BOEHNER

Judy Woodruff sat down with Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, in his ceremonial office Monday night to talk about the Republican agenda and his goal of getting a grand bargain on cutting the deficit.

Among the highlights, Rep. Boehner told Judy (@judywoodruff) that Congress is "not as dysfunctional as people think."

He boasted that a new highway bill would have no earmarks, comparing it to the last measure that had 6,317 of them.

Boehner disclosed that after saying recently he hadn't spoke with the president in a while, the two talked last week. From the interview:

Judy: President Obama has had his own ups and downs in the polls. How would you describe your relationship with him?

Boehner: The president and I get along fine. We really do. We have a very cordial relationship. Doesn't mean we agree on everything, but the president and I have had a lot of frank conversations about the big issues that our country's facing. And whether it was the issue of the debt, whether it was the issue of foreign policy or our defense posture, we've had a lot of very good discussions. Unfortunately, we've not seen a lot of results.

Judy: How recently have you spoken with him?

Boehner: I talked to him this last week.

Judy: You want to tell me about what?

Boehner: Oh, I'm sure you'd love to know....

Judy: Well, it appeared to the public last summer that you and he were pretty close to a deal on the debt ceiling -- both big budget cuts, tax increases -- but that you were, in effect, held back by your own membership. Is that what happened?

Boehner: No, no. I was more than willing to put revenues on the table. I thought if we reformed our tax system, we could produce more revenue from it. But I told the president, I'm not going to put more revenue on the table unless you're willing to make real changes to our entitlement programs because in their current form, they're not sustainable.

The president would never say yes to any of those changes to the entitlement programs. And even though I had revenue on the table and the president hadn't said yes, he came back and wanted $500 billion more in revenue. There is a way to do this, but it takes courage. And I am more than willing to address this problem at any moment with the president, because the future of our country depends on us coming to an agreement that will begin to solve our debt problem.

Judy also asked the speaker about the tone of the presidential campaign. He said he isn't too worried. "Well, no one likes to see nasty campaigns," Boehner said. "But I would remind you that the fight in 2008 between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton went on through June of that year. And so while I rather not see it, it's part of the political process. Out of this will come our nominee. And I don't think it'll have any impact on the November election."

Judy asked if the candidates should "tone it down."

"Listen, I'm not going to tell them what to do. That's not my job," Boehner said, later adding just after the interview, "Time heals all wounds."

Watch the full interview here.

2012 LINE ITEMS

NewsHour health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser looks at the election-year battle over contraception.
Stu Rothenberg and Susan Page spoke Monday night with Gwen Ifill about the contraception issue, Republican enthusiasm and Gingrich's delegate strategy.
The New York Times' Mike McIntire reports the Obama campaign will return donations from two American brothers of a Mexico casino magnate who fled drug and fraud charges in the United States.
Jon Huntsman tells the Salt Lake Tribune that he's ruling out another presidential bid -- for now.
Gingrich has dropped his legal challenge to appear on the Virginia primary ballot next month, reports Politico's Josh Gerstein.
CNN reports that Santorum's campaign has uncovered 49 petition signatures incorrectly rejected by the Marion County (Ind.) board of elections. Officials ruled last week than Santorum had come up 24 signatures short of the 500 needed in the Hoosier State's 7th Congressional District because there were irregularities regarding the listed addresses. The Indiana primary is scheduled for May 8.
NPR's Carrie Kahn looks at the rise of independent voters in Colorado.
Vice President Biden calls Gingrich's food stamp remarks "inappropriate."
The Center for Public Integrity's iWatch looks at Bain donations to Romney.
ABC News' Shushannah Walshe writes about Santorum's friendship with his super PAC's bankroller, Foster Friess, who is traveling with the campaign.
The anti-Obama Americans for Prosperity ad we linked to Monday ran on national cable about 20 times, costing the conservative group roughly $230,000, a source told the Morning Line.

TOP TWEETS

Intrade Update: Obama continues upward swing - now trading at 58% to be re-elected in Nov, up from 50% a month ago: bit.ly/oexmwE
— Intrade Tweets (@Intrade) February 7, 2012

Romney tacks right on social issues - decries "abortive pills." abcn.ws/A1xO06 via @emilyabc
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) February 7, 2012

OUTSIDE THE LINES

The Washington Post published an investigation into congressional earmarks, finding that 33 lawmakers "have directed more than $300 million in earmarks and other spending provisions to dozens of public projects that are next to or within about two miles of the lawmakers' own property." The story analyzed all 535 members of Congress and "also found 16 lawmakers who sent tax dollars to companies, colleges or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards." Read the story here and see the analysis of the data here.
The House ethics committee announced Monday it was extending its investigation into financial disclosures of Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla. Investigators are looking into whether Buchanan, a four-term lawmaker, violated ethics rules by failing to report his position with more than a dozen firms, reports the Washington Post's Dan Eggen.
A Sunlight Foundation study released Monday looked at the retention rates of House members based on turnover in congressional offices between the third quarter of 2009 and the third quarter of 2011. Rep. Betty Sutton, D-Ohio, had the lowest retention rate at 19 percent, losing 17 of 21 staffers. Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., had the highest retention rate at 94 percent, retaining 15 of 16 staffers.
The Washington Post's Rachel Weiner looks at the controversy surrounding Republican U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra's campaign ad that aired during the Super Bowl. The spot includes a young Asian woman who speaks broken English while Asian-sounding music plays in the background. The ad is intended to attack Sen. Debbie Stabenow for helping China by increasing the national debt. Hoekstra, a former nine-term congressman, is running in an open primary for the chance to challenge Stabenow in November.
Sen. Mark Kirk's condition was upgraded to "good," and the Illinois Republican was able to watch the SuperBowl, his doctor said. Kirk suffered a stroke last month.
Roll Call's Abby Livingston reports that Rep. Ben Quayle will challenge fellow Republican, Rep. Dave Schweikert, in the race for Arizona's 6th Congressional District. Livingston writes, "The 6th district is far safer for a Republican than the tossup 9th district, which is where Quayle's home is."
Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz talks to retiring members who find themselves in high demand -- thanks to their flush campaign coffers.

NewsHour politics desk assistant Alex Bruns contributed to this report.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

Newt Gingrich holds three Ohio campaign events: in Cincinnati at 9:30 a.m., Dayton at 2:30 p.m. and Columbus at 6:30 p.m.
Mitt Romney attends a rally in Loveland, Colo., at 10:50 a.m. and hosts a caucus night event in Denver at 9:45 p.m.
Rick Santorum hits all three of Tuesday's voting states, attending a rally in Colorado Springs at 11 a.m., making a stop in Blaine, Minn., at 4 p.m. and finishing up with a primary night event in St. Charles, Mo., at 10 p.m.
Ron Paul holds a caucus night event in Golden Valley, Minn., at 9:30 p.m.

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.

Hunter's Moons: Astronomers Use Kepler Spacecraft to Search for Exomoons

2012-02-06T21:42:47-04:00

An artist's conception of an exoplanet hosting smaller moons. Image by David A. Aguilar/ CfA.

Astronomers have discovered a trove of exoplanets--more than 700 worlds in orbit around distant stars, with leads on thousands of additional suspects. So now, naturally, they're beginning to ask: What moons might be in orbit about these planets?

It is a reasonable question. Most of the planets in our solar system host sizable natural satellites. And in some planetary systems, the moons of an extrasolar planet could themselves be favorable habitats for extraterrestrial life.

To answer it, a team of astronomers is now digging through publicly available data from Kepler, NASA's prolific exoplanet-finding spacecraft, in hopes of detecting the faint signal of the first known exomoon.

"It's something that I've been very passionate about for a long time," says David Kipping, who wrote his PhD thesis at University College London last year on exomoons. Now a postdoctoral scholar at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Kipping is leading the Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler project, or HEK. He and his colleagues described the HEK campaign in a recent study posted to the preprint Web site arXiv.org that has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

"When I first started this, I was just seeing what was possible," Kipping says. "As I went on with this, I realized that it wasn't just a crazy idea." He and his colleagues calculated that if large moons are common in the galaxy, Kepler might be sensitive enough to find them.

Since 2009, the Kepler spacecraft has trailed Earth in orbit around the sun, doggedly pursuing a deceptively simple mission. With a giant digital camera, Kepler keeps watch on a field of more than 150,000 stars near the constellation Cygnus. It watches those stars for so-called transits--instances where a planet passes in front of its host star, which slightly and temporarily diminishes the star's apparent brightness. So far, the mission has been incredibly productive; Kepler scientists have discovered more than 60 new exoplanets and have identified more than 2,000 likely candidates that await confirmation.

Some 50 of those candidates fall in the so-called habitable zone, the region around a star where temperatures would allow for the presence of liquid water and perhaps the emergence of life. A gas-giant planet in the habitable zone, akin to a warmer Jupiter or Saturn, would lack a solid surface and hence would not be an ideal habitat for life--but its moons might be. "There could be a lot of habitable moons out there, and we want to know about them," Kipping says.

If any Kepler planets happened to host a very large satellite, the moon's presence would have subtle but detectable effects on the planet's transits. For instance, the moon could itself pass in front of the star, blotting out a small fraction of starlight just before or just after the planet itself transits. Alternately, a massive moon could exert a gravitational tug strong enough to perturb the planet's orbit, causing the planetary transits to diverge from a steady, clocklike recurrence.

Promising signals demanding further scrutiny for the presence of a possible exomoon are selected both by analyzing where large, plausibly detectable moons could exist in stable orbits and by old-fashioned visual inspection. The latter effort is led by Allan Schmitt, a Minnesota citizen scientist and a veteran of planethunters.org, an online project in which volunteers browse through public Kepler data to uncover newfound exoplanets. "He was e-mailing me these candidate signals" of possible moons, Kipping recalls. "I said, 'You've done so much work here, why don't you join the team?' He agreed, and since that time he's been a full-time collaborator for us. He's looked through hundreds and hundreds of light curves, looking for these blips."

The catch is that to produce a detectable blip, an exomoon would have to vastly outweigh any satellites found in our solar system. "In the very best case, Kepler could find moons down to 20 percent the mass of the Earth," Kipping says. That means Kepler would miss moons the size of, say, Ganymede and Titan, the largest moons of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively--each are only about 2 percent the mass of Earth. An easier target, if it exists, would be a moon of roughly Earth mass orbiting a giant planet. "We're looking for moons that don't exist in the solar system," Kipping acknowledges. But the solar system hardly constitutes a comprehensive sample of what nature allows--most of the worlds turned up by planetary searches of the past two decades are oddballs that do not resemble any of the familiar eight planets. "When you look at the exoplanets that have been found, there's every reason to be optimistic," he adds.

Astronomers affiliated with the Kepler mission are cheering the HEK effort on, even though no one knows if the class of exomoons that the spacecraft could detect even exists. "Plenty of things have surprised us before," says Eric Ford, an astronomer at the University of Florida and a participating scientist on the Kepler mission. "Whether or not [Earth-size moons] actually form, we don't know. That's why we should look," he adds. "Kepler has the sensitivity that if they are there, and if they're common, then we could detect them."

There is no reason to assume that the size limit of satellites within the solar system is a universal law, notes Darin Ragozzine, a postdoctoral astrophysicist at the CfA who works with Kepler. "It's certainly not out of the question that there are moons detectable by HEK," he says. "Kepler's definitely the best shot that we have at this."

Ragozzine notes that the HEK search is systematic enough that even if Kipping and company do not find any moons, they will have learned something valuable. "They are doing the study so carefully and thoroughly that even if there are zero discoveries, we will learn something about exomoons," namely that large ones are rare, he says.

Kipping and his colleagues are now preparing their first preliminary results for publication and hope to have something to say about the frequency of large moons by the end of the year. "Whether we turn up 10 moons or zero moons, my hope is we'd at least have a flavor of how common big moons are in Kepler's field of view and throughout the galaxy," he says.

This article is reproduced with permission from Scientific American. It was first published on February 6. Find the original story here.

Next Health Care Mandate: Flu Shots for Medical Workers?

2012-02-06T18:23:07-04:00

Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images.

Brandon Hostler's arm is usually among the first extended for the annual flu shot at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va. He is, after all, a registered nurse -- he knows it can do some good.

But if that shot ever becomes mandatory, he will balk.

"I wouldn't quit or switch jobs," he said. "But we are health care professionals. We know the risks and the benefits, and to force us to do something like that and not have a say in it, I think it would be offensive and unwanted."

In this moment of looming change and controversial mandates in American health care, the debate over whether flu shots should be mandatory for hospital employees has become a smaller but important battle between those who feel government should force its hand to improve the health care system and those who believe that critical civil liberties are being steamrolled.

Mass Casualties

In the thick of the fray is a problem of massive proportion: Influenza kills between 3,000 and 49,000 people each year and sends 200,000 to the hospital for respiratory illnesses and heart conditions. That's according to a subcommittee of the federal government's National Vaccine Advisory Committee, which will meet this week to discuss potential strategies for dramatically boosting immunization and inching closer to a Healthy People 2020 goal.

The U.S. government would like to see 90 percent of America's health care personnel immunized annually against the flu by the end of the decade. But reaching that goal begs a major question: Should the government encourage organization-wide, state-based or even national mandates to get there?

In the 2010-11 flu season, 63.5 percent of health care personnel received a flu shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In hospitals that required immunization, compliance was nearly universal.

"This should be mandated and it should have been done earlier," said Helen Darling, president and CEO of the National Business Group on Health.

The nonprofit organization, which represents more than 300 large employers, including 68 of the Fortune 100 companies, threw its support behind a flu shot requirement for health care workers last week, and it did so in part due to three additional statistics, Darling said. The virus can be transmitted to patients by both symptomatic and asymptomatic health care providers. One in four health care workers shows evidence of having the flu each year. And 70 percent of them continue to work despite having flu-like symptoms.

"The idea that a pregnant woman can enter a hospital and deliver a baby in a place where employees aren't required to take every step possible to guard against a preventable disease ... I just think that many people would be stunned by that," Darling said. "If hospital workers don't want to get the shot, they don't need to work in a hospital -- they can go work in a library and spread their germs to people checking out books."

Where's the 'Informed Consent?'

Needless to say, not everyone agrees. Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, says some of the studies supporting the effectiveness of the flu vaccine are "flawed" -- at least enough that workers should be allowed to exercise "informed consent." In a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regarding the subcommittee's recommendation, Fisher and her team also called into question the CDC's estimate for annual flu-related deaths. All told, she said, the evidence is too shaky for any kind of government-imposed mandate.

Certainly, she said, the shots should be available for those that want them. "But there should be in America the right to make informed, voluntary choices about the preventive health care we use. Because when these hospital employees receive flu shots, they're engaging in a medical intervention that carries a risk of great sickness and even death."

Front Line Obligations

Those arguments don't hold much weight with health officials in Colorado who want the vaccine administered to all hospital and nursing home employees -- with no religious or personal exemptions allowed. A narrow set of individuals with documented medical conditions could apply for a waiver, but they would be required to wear a mask during flu season.

The Colorado Hospital Association supports the general idea, which will be taken up by the state board of health later this month.

"If we did face a serious epidemic, it serves no one's interest to have our health care workers on the front line at home, sick," said Steven Summer, the hospital association's president and CEO. "They would be the first-responders, and having them home sick wouldn't work so well. In the absence of a clear mandate, we can't get where we need to be."

On a more individual level, it's an "ethical responsibility," said Amy Garcia, chief nursing officer for the American Nurses Association.

"Part of nursing's code of ethics is that the patient comes first. So we believe if there is a chance that a nurse could expose a patient, it is the ethical responsibility of the nurse to be protected by vaccinations," Garcia said.

A strictly enforced policy is a little different, though, she said. Any formalized rule should always be accompanied by enough protections to ensure that "nurses are treated fairly."

That includes suitable exemptions for those allergic to the vaccine, the ability to opt-out for personal reasons, and bans on discrimination or punitive measures for those who choose not to participate. The policy should also be part of a larger "comprehensive infection control program" that includes the use of masks, gloves and aprons in appropriate settings, Garcia said. And immunization clinics should be free and convenient for employees working all shifts.

Swine Flu Fever

Few of those protections were in place in 2009, when the nation panicked under the building threat of H1N1 and New York state officials issued an edict that medical professionals either receive seasonal and swine-flu vaccines or lose their jobs.

"There was mass outrage because it was put forward without any discussion, there were no personal exemptions, no religious exemptions," said Renee Gecsedi, a registered nurse and director of education practice and research for the New York State Nurses Association. "There was a medical exemption but it was so narrow that people with egg sensitivities -- which often flare up after the vaccination -- weren't included "

The uproar coupled with the vaccine shortage that year caused state officials to rescind the policy. But it served as a telling measurement of public opinion, Gecsedi said: "If these mandates go into effect, employees need to have options."

Uncertain Steps Ahead

At the moment, the subgroup of the federal government's National Vaccine Advisory Committee isn't advocating a full-scale national mandate. In fact, its draft proposal only recommends that health care employers "strongly consider an employer requirement for influenza immunization" after a broader, multi-pronged approach fails to hit certain benchmarks in the build-up to the 90 percent goal for 2020.

Still, the federal government's not ruling anything out, said Dr. Don Wright, deputy assistant secretary for health care quality at the Department of Health and Human Services.

"The National Vaccine Advisory Committee can accept, modify or reject the subcommittee's proposal -- or they can come up with something else," he said. "I'm not sure where the committee will come out."

Do you think a flu vaccine for hospital workers is a good idea? Share your thoughts in the comments section below or on Twitter.

Rate Raters, Casino Traders and the Greek Debt Problem

2012-02-06T11:36:52-04:00

Standard & Poor's Headquarters in Lower Manhattan. Photo by B64 via Wikimedia Commons.

Paul Solman frequently answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news on his Making Sen$e page. Here are a trio of queries for Monday:

Peter Steiner asks: Who rates the raters?

Paul Solman: Rater raters? No one. Still.

Warren Rottmann asks: Are the stock exchanges of today more of a casino for traders rather than an exchange for investors? Is options trading and ultra-short trading at the heart of it?

Paul Solman: Sure seems like it.

Demos Kazanas asks: A solution to the Greek debt problem I have not seen discussed is Greece paying its internal obligations (its budget is 50 percent of its GDP) in low interest (1 percent) euro denominated bonds. These will be worth 50 percent-70 percent of nominal value and could serve as currency substitute while injecting much needed liquidity in its economy. There are many benefits of such a move, not least of which that it will force moving away from cash and into electronic transactions across the economy, thus reducing tax avoidance. I would value your view on this notion.

Paul Solman: So you mean every government worker would take an immediate pay cut of up to 50 percent? I can certainly believe that, as you say, "There are many benefits of a such a move," but unless I'm missing something, domestic tranquility is not likely to be one of them.

This entry is cross-posted on the Making Sen$e page, where correspondent Paul Solman answers your economic and business questions.

Follow @PaulSolman

Romney Coasts to Victory in Nevada Primary, but Hurdles Remain

2012-02-06T09:27:27-04:00

Mitt Romney talks with his staff aboard his plane en route to Las Vegas for Saturday's Nevada caucuses. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

The weekend's drama was reserved for Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium, not the Las Vegas strip.

Mitt Romney scored a 25-point victory in Saturday's Nevada caucuses, performing strong with every key demographic.

Not that anyone should be surprised.

As Jon Ralston, the dean of Nevada political journalism, put it on Friday's NewsHour, "Romney has been running for president here and elsewhere for many years.... He has really worked Nevada."

What's more interesting was the battle for No. 2. It took a day after the caucuses before there was a final tally, but Newt Gingrich edged Ron Paul for second place by less than 800 votes. Turnout was lower than in the 2008 caucuses, which Romney also won.

Check out the final numbers in the NewsHour's map center.

Romney still has the matter of those pesky rivals to contend with, and Rick Santorum is on the rise.

A new survey from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling found Santorum actually leading Romney, 29 percent to 27 percent, ahead of Tuesday's Minnesota caucuses. Gingrich follows at 22 percent, while Paul is at 19 percent.

Santorum also holds a lead in a PPP poll of Republicans planning to participate in Tuesday's non-binding contest in Missouri.

But Gingrich is looking months ahead.

In a round of Sunday show interviews, the former House speaker said his focus is on Super Tuesday states. He predicted that he and Romney would be tied in the delegate count by April.

"[B]y the time Texas is over, we'll be very, very competitive in the delegate count," Gingrich said on Meet the Press, leaving out the fact that it's possible the Lone Star State will move its primary after April 3.

As the bitter presidential contest turns into a numbers game, the Washington Post's Amy Gardner reports on the new strategy Gingrich forged while bunkered down in a Las Vegas casino:

The crux of the former House speaker's new plan is math: a complex analysis of each state's delegates, how they're awarded and how many, reasonably, Gingrich can expect to win. He will focus heavily on upcoming Southern states, where he expects his Georgia roots and conservative rhetoric to play well. And he will step up his attacks on his leading rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, for being too liberal to take on President Obama in the fall. Gingrich confirmed the strategy in a meeting with reporters in a nearly empty hotel ballroom here Saturday night after the Nevada results showed him losing to Romney by more than 20 percentage points. The results stood in stark contrast to Gingrich's confidence that he could go on to win.

Does Gingrich have the finances to stay in the fight?

The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg write from Las Vegas that billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has told associates he would pony up cash for Romney in a general election, despite having bankrolled Gingrich. Still, an Adelson friend and Romney fundraiser is quoted in the story noting that "Sheldon is committed to keeping [Gingrich] in the race as long as he wants to stay in."

The story also notes that Romney initiated a phone call with Adelson that aides said was "cordial" and included Adelson "even sharing some advice about his campaign message."

SUPER BOWL SIT-DOWN

Shortly after taking office three years ago, President Obama told Matt Lauer of NBC News in a Super Bowl Sunday interview that if he did not get the economy turned around in three years, his presidency was "going to be a one-term proposition." The Republicans have been using that remark in campaign material.

When Lauer reminded Mr. Obama in an interview before Sunday's Giants-Patriots game that, in fact, three years have transpired, the president said, "I deserve a second term, but we're not done."

"We've made progress," the president added. "The thing right now is to just make sure we don't starting turning in a new direction that could throw that progress off."

With the economy showing signs of life, most recently in the form of last Friday's Labor Department report that found 243,000 jobs were added in January, the president is making the case to voters that they should stay the course, rather than go with a Republican alternative.

After his big win Saturday, Romney appears to be in the driver's seat to claim the GOP nomination. If the economy continues to improve, however, Romney will have to recalibrate his message, as his bid for the presidency this time around has been that he is best equipped to turn around the ailing economy.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday reveals that even with the sluggish recovery, the president still leads Romney in a hypothetical general election contest.

Mr. Obama holds a nine-point advantage over Romney, 52 percent to 43 percent, among all Americans. The president's lead with registered voters, meanwhile, is six points, 51 percent to 45 percent.

Half of Americans approve of the president's job performance, while 46 percent disapprove. Forty-nine percent of respondents said the president deserves re-election, with the same number saying he doesn't.

The Post's Dan Balz and Jon Cohen also examined the combative GOP nominating process and the impact it has had on views of the candidates:

Overall, 55 percent of those who are closely following the campaign say they disapprove of what the GOP candidates have been saying. By better than 2 to 1, Americans say the more they learn about Romney, the less they like him. Even among Republicans, as many offer negative as positive assessments of him on this question. Judgments about former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who denounced Romney on Saturday night in Nevada, are about 3 to 1 negative.

While Romney's standing as the Republican front-runner remains on solid ground, his positioning in the general election could become more uncertain if Gingrich follows through on his vow to take the fight into the summer and if the economy continues to gain steam.

PROBING PAUL

Roll Call published an investigative report by Jonathan Strong about Paul's congressional travel, suggesting the small-government crusader double-billed for flights home. From the piece, which leads the Monday paper:

Rep. Ron Paul appears to have been paid twice for flights between Washington, D.C., and his Congressional district, receiving reimbursement from taxpayers and also from a network of political and nonprofit organizations he controlled, according to public records and documents obtained by Roll Call.

Roll Call identified eight flights for which the Texas Republican, a GOP presidential candidate and leading champion of smaller government, was reimbursed twice for the same trip. Roll Call also found dozens more instances of duplicate payments for travel from 1999 to 2009, totaling thousands of dollars' worth of excess payments, but the evidence in those cases is not as complete.

Strong writes that Roll Call identified "more than 25 flights, totaling about $15,000, for which the dates, costs, airline companies and flight paths closely match reimbursements made by the House and Paul's other organizations." One example: "[O]n March 24, 2003, Paul purchased a round-trip flight from Washington, D.C., to Houston for $651.50. Several weeks later, filings with the FEC show, the Committee to Re-Elect Ron Paul paid $651.50 for the Continental Airlines ticket. Congressional expenditure records show Paul also was reimbursed $651.50 by taxpayers for the same flight."

David M. Halbfinger delivers the New York Times' profile of Paul, a piece that looks at how the Texas congressman's upbringing and family life shaped his libertarian world view.

Over the weekend Paul's campaign team crafted a chart showing he receives more donations from active-duty military personnel than the other candidates. The campaign said he collected more than $150,000 in military donations in the fourth quarter.

NEWSHOUR NEWS

Judy Woodruff will interview Speaker of the House John Boehner on Monday night. Tune into the NewsHour.

What should Judy ask the speaker? Tweet @judywoodruff with suggestions.

Gwen Ifill (@pbsgwen) answers the five questions she posted earlier in the week.

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS

Jobs figures released Friday were better than expected with the unemployment rate dropping to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years.

The NewsHour's report and analysis are here.

It's good news for President Obama, but Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer offered a memo over the weekend looking at the "dangerous" numbers game when it comes to the unemployment rate. "High unemployment has become the new normal so we're tempted to think that slightly-less-high unemployment is good," he wrote. "We're tempted to settle. It may get better, yes, but that doesn't mean it's good. It doesn't mean the economy has recovered."

Spicer said the president must be judged on his record on the economy and adds that Republicans "must communicate to voters our dedication to fighting for hard-working taxpayers and for the unemployed."

"Our message has to be about more than just lowering an unemployment number. It has to be about raising America's spirit and reviving American opportunity," Spicer wrote.

Piling on, Americans for Prosperity released a 60-second television spot Monday morning in honor of what would have been Ronald Reagan's 101st birthday. The conservative group compares Reagan's economic outlook to Mr. Obama's. Watch the ad here.

The Democratic National Committee offered its own take in a web video targeting Romney. It suggests the front-runner has changed his tune on the president's handling of the economy. Watch the video here.

Mark Shields and David Brooks dished on the jobs figures on Friday's NewsHour. Shields called Romney "tone deaf" for his remarks about the "very poor" and offered his theory on the Republican front-runner: "Mitt Romney is now coming across as a guy who was born in a log cabin in Grosse Pointe, Mich., with silver earplugs. I mean, he doesn't hear. I mean, it really is setting in. And I think Republicans you talk to are getting nervous that perhaps this guy just doesn't haven't the touch. I mean, it's not a silver spoon. It is silver earplugs."

Watch the segment, which also touched on the fight between the Catholic church and the Obama administration.

2012 LINE ITEMS

The Las Vegas Sun on the Silver State's "bumbling" and "bickering" caucuses: http://bit.ly/zZLLIK
The New York Times writes about the controversy that erupted at a caucus site for Orthodox Jews on Saturday.
The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim and Amanda Terkel reported on a retreat hosted by the billionaire Koch brothers. Charles and David Koch and 250 to 300 others pledged to donate approximately $100 million in the effort to deny Mr. Obama a second term.
You're welcome.
The Washington Post's Rosalind Helderman dissects how states went rogue on the calendar this cycle and quotes an RNC member who suggests Florida was "greedy, greedy, greedy."
The New York Times' Mark Leibovich razzes the unfunny presidential field.
Conservative talker Ed Morrissey endorses Santorum. So does singer Pat Boone.
Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey held nothing back when talking about Gingrich on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday:

"I feel bad for him. I think he's digressed into a state of taking a second-rate campaign and turning it into a first-rate vendetta. And I think he's putting himself out of the game because he can't get over his obsession about his own hurt feelings over the campaign in Iowa. He needs to get beyond that and to the nation's people's business if he expects to have any chance whatsoever. I thought that last night was really sad for him and, quite frankly, again so much of Newt's whole life is overstated. He overstates the case in such a hyperbolic fashion and just looks vindictive."

Talking Points Memo charts Mr. Obama's poll numbers on a timeline of big events in his presidency.
Maureen Dowd writes an entire column on Callista Gingrich.

TOP TWEETS

Looking forward to catching some of the big game tonight. Wish the Bears weren't watching it from home, too. -bo
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 5, 2012

Adelson acknowledged in Dec he would back Mitt: "if Newt doesn't get nomination, I would support GOP candt," he told us politi.co/u7CAKi
— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) February 5, 2012

The Iowa caucuses were originally scheduled to happen today. Thank Florida for forcing everyone into January #HotlineSort
— Reid Wilson (@HotlineReid) February 6, 2012

OUTSIDE THE LINES

Politico's Jake Sherman and Manu Raju detail the internal GOP fight over extending the payroll tax cut.
The Atlantic posts a helpful chart on the status of those automatic budgets cuts triggered by the supercommittee's summer failure.
Indiana's Republican Secretary of State Charlie White was convicted Saturday on multiple charges in a voter fraud case. GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels appointed an interim official to replace him.
Shields and Brooks talk football.

ON THE TRAIL

All events are listed in Eastern Time.

Rick Santorum delivers remarks on health care in Rochester, Minn., at 11 a.m., addresses the Colorado Election Energy Summit in Golden at 5 p.m. and holds a rally in Denver at 9:30 p.m.
Newt Gingrich holds a rally in Denver at 1:30 p.m., addresses the Colorado Energy Summit in Golden at 4 p.m. and attends a rally in Bloomington, Minn., at 9 p.m.
Mitt Romney holds a pair of Colorado rallies: in Grand Junction at 2:20 p.m. and Centennial at 8:25 p.m.
Ron Paul campaigns in Minnesota, with a town hall in St. Cloud at 5 p.m. and a rally in Minneapolis at 9 p.m.

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.

Greece's Moment of Truth

2012-02-04T17:55:37-04:00

European Union and Greek national flags fly near the Parthenon temple in Athens. File photo by Angelos Tzortzinis/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

ATHENS | The Greek government declared Saturday that it had reached partial agreement with its euro area creditors on a $170 billion bailout package. But a gulf of differences remains, with only a day of talks to go.

"We've effectively agreed on how to refinance and restructure the Greek banking system, the course of the privatization program, and a number of institutional and structural changes," Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said. He called the talks "extremely difficult and delicate".

"The distance between a successful outcome and a dead end ... is very, very small," he said.

If Greece fails to agree to a series of austerity and reform measures by Sunday night, it may not be technically possible for governments to produce the money and for banks to carry out a bond swap before March 20. That is when Greece faces $19 billion in bond maturities it cannot afford. Non-payment would then create the eurozone's first default.

The two biggest areas of remaining disagreement, Venizelos said, were over creditor's demands that Greece reduce its private sector salaries and make further cuts in public spending this year.

Greece's so-called troika of creditors (European Central Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Fund) wants the minimum wage of $988 a month gross to fall by at least 10 percent. It wants bonuses amounting to another 15 percent of salary to go.

Talks between unions and employers on a voluntary reduction in salaries reached an impasse yesterday, meaning that the government will now have to circumvent union talks with an act of parliament. If that happens, say the unions, they will respond ferociously. "There will be a legal challenge in court, strikes, demonstrations and protests," said an official from the General Confederation of Greek Labour involved in the talks.

That would place further pressure on the already strained governing coalition of socialists, conservatives and right-wingers. Prime Minister Loukas Papademos met with the leaders of the three coalition parties on Saturday. They will have to sign written commitments to stick to a list of austerity and reform measures by Sunday. The commitment would bind them even after an election, perhaps the most contentious condition of the bailout.

The center-right parties are already taking an anti-austerity line as Greece enters its fourth year of recession and unemployment stands at 19.2 percent.

Greece's recession last year may have been 6.5 percent of GDP, half a point higher than thought, estimated the Centre of Planning and Economic Research (KEPE), a respected think tank, earlier this week. That would mean a 13-point total shrinkage of the economy over the past three years, with KEPE estimating an additional 3.42 percent recession this year and zero growth in 2013.

Conservative shadow finance minister Christos Staikouras said Friday that Greece's inability to hit deficit tax revenue targets and reduction targets "have made more urgent than ever the re-evaluation and modification of certain policies that have proven economically ineffective."

Greece faces an almost impossibly tight timetable before a Feb. 13 deadline. During the week the European Commission and euro area national governments must begin the process of releasing money to finance a $130 billion writedown of privately held Greek debt. By Feb. 13, Greece must begin to exchange privately held bonds it cannot honor with new bonds that carry longer maturity terms and lower interest.

Questions Linger About Komen's Commitment to Planned Parenthood

2012-02-03T21:42:33-04:00

Even after the Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity reversed course Friday and said it would not halt grants to Planned Parenthood over a Republican-led congressional investigation, a number of observers wondered if Planned Parenthood might eventually be turned down because of other concerns about how it refers women for mammograms.

Komen officials said Friday they had no immediate plans to halt funding over concerns raised about Planned Parenthood's referrals. But in statements the Foundation provided to the NewsHour, it seemed to leave the door open to possibly doing so in the future.

"We will increasingly look to fund grants that can measure outcomes successfully, define outcomes that are important to us, and that meet the needs of the community," Komen officials wrote in a statement provided to the NewsHour.

"We are moving toward more outcomes-based granting, but that does not mean we will no longer fund education or pass-through grantees," the statement said.

The questions are lingering in part because Komen officials and spokespeople had emphasized two different reasons over two days for halting grants to 16 of 19 Planned Parenthood clinics that do breast cancer screenings.

On Wednesday, Komen officials had said the primary decision to cut future grants was due to new internal criteria that bar money to any organizations under investigation by federal, state or local governments. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., is leading an investigation into whether Planned Parenthood may have used federal funds to provide abortions.

But on a conference call with reporters Thursday, Komen founder and CEO Nancy Brinker spoke instead about a different concern -- the way Planned Parenthood clinics provide referrals for mammograms. Planned Parenthood says its funding from Komen has been directly connected with nearly 170,000 clinical breast exams and more than 6,400 mammogram referrals.

Those referrals seemed to be the central issue cited Thursday. And it came after Planned Parenthood and many women said they believed Komen had caved to political pressure surrounding the fact that Planned Parenthood provides abortions.

"We have decided not to fund, wherever possible, pass-through grants," Brinker told reporters yesterday. "We were giving them money, they were sending women out for mammograms. What we would like to have are clinics where we can directly fund mammograms."

In an official statement released by Komen to the media Friday morning, Brinker directly addressed the question of investigations, saying that an "investigation must be criminal and conclusive" to disqualify a group from receiving a grant. But Brinker's statement this morning seemed to skirt the other concern raised less than 24 hours ago about mammograms and services.

Reporters openly wondered throughout the day whether Komen was leaving itself an out.

On Friday night, Komen spokespeople said there was no push to stop grants to Planned Parenthood for now over those reasons. But they noted that chapters and affiliates could make their own decisions.

"For the time being, grants are active and Planned Parenthood -- like all grantees -- is eligible to reapply," Komen said in the statement provide to the NewsHour. "The affiliates will make the decisions about the grants in their communities."

Komen provides $93 million in grants to communities throughout the United States.

One other story that is getting some attention in the outrage from the past three days is the role Planned Parenthood provides with breast cancer screenings and exams. The Associated Press has a good breakdown of it here.

On Friday's NewsHour broadcast, Hari Sreenivasan spoke with Amina Khan of The Los Angeles Times about the abrupt shift in message at the well-known breast cancer charity.

The Doubleheader: Newt, the NFL and Headbutts

2012-02-03T19:24:50-04:00

It might be the first time in the history of the NewsHour that we used that word in a headline, but that's what you may have come to expect from The Doubleheader, where we talk about the sport of politics and the politics of sport.

This week, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks assess the chances, fate and fortune of Newt Gingrich, and the consequences for Mitt Romney. They also lay down opposing views on who will win the Super Bowl, and we speak briefly about the tragedy of head injuries in the NFL. Please see NewsHour's earlier coverage on the topic.

Video by Justin Scuiletti. Follow Hari on Twitter, like him on Facebook or circle him on Google Plus.

Khmer Rouge Chief Jailer, Known as Duch, Sentenced to Life

2012-02-03T18:56:09-04:00

The U.N.-backed tribunal in Cambodia extended the jail time of Khmer Rouge chief jailer Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, from 19 years to a life sentence on Friday.

In 2010, a lower court sentenced Duch to 35 years in prison -- reduced to 19 years with time served -- for his role as director of the Tuol Sleng interrogation and execution facility in Phnom Penh, where an estimated 12,000 people died.

We look back at the NewsHour's past coverage, including special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro's May 2010 report on the role of the tribunal and the case against Duch, now 69:

And a June 2011 report describes how a new generation in Cambodia is learning about its country's bloody past:

The second major trial of three senior Khmer Rouge leaders continues this year.

View all of the NewsHour's World coverage and follow us on Twitter.

After Florida Primary, What's Next? 5 Questions Answered

2012-02-03T17:00:51-04:00

Right after the polls closed Tuesday night and Mitt Romney had been declared the winner of the Florida primary, syndicated columnists and PBS NewsHour contributors David Brooks, Mark Shields and I looked at each other and sighed.

As we prepared for the NewsHour's 11 p.m. politics special, would we have anything left to say?

Turns out we had plenty.

During Romney's acceptance speech, he declared he would return to Tampa to accept the Republican Party's presidential nomination at this summer's convention. Newt Gingrich, who lost badly to Romney in Florida, pretty much pledged the same thing.

Setting aside whether either man is correct, one thing remains true: The Republican nominating convention is a whopping seven months away, only a tiny number of delegates have been awarded and there are twists and turns ahead.

On Tuesday, I posed five things in this space - five M's -- to watch for coming out of Florida. Herewith, the answers:

1. Margin | The least-surprising element of the evening was the size of the Romney victory -- 14-percentage points. Even Gingrich endorser Herman Cain called it a "shellacking." The most surprising element was Gingrich's total refusal to acknowledge it. His staff printed up placards with the words "46 States To Go," even though their boss will not even be on the ballot in all of those states. And when reporters asked what his plan was for the next round of voting in Nevada, Gingrich admitted he had not yet given it any thought. He was leaving for Las Vegas that night.

2. Money | The Romney campaign dumped tens of millions of dollars worth of negative radio and television ads on Gingrich's head. There was only one pro-Romney ad in that blizzard, and it was a TV ad in Spanish. The latest campaign finance reports show that Romney and his partisans have been banking the resources for such an assault for some months. Unless some finance angel is willing to single-handedly challenge that advantage, it is tough to see how Gingrich or anyone else can counter that kind of negative advertising any time soon. Free media only takes you so far, especially without a nationally televised debate on the docket until Feb. 22.

3. Momentum | Votes beget votes, and money begets money. Looked at this way, it's hard to argue that Romney has not reclaimed the momentum -- and the sense of inevitability -- he had a month ago. As House Speaker John Boehner pointed out this week, the 2008 Democratic competition between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continued months after the earliest primaries ended -- to Texas and Ohio. He could still be knocked off course, but for now the former Massachusetts governor has the wind at his back.

4. Mitt | How good a candidate is he? As seems to happen with great regularity, Romney tossed that question into the air again this week. The very next morning after his Florida triumph, he stumbled on his way to the politician's routine embrace of middle class voters by saying he did not care very much about the poor. What he meant was that he believes there are programs in place to provide for the very poor, but the context was lost. The very next day, he was endorsed by billionaire Donald Trump, and any context was obliterated.

5. Moon colonies | This is my new euphemism for getting off track. Most candidates are pretty good at driving home the same points over and over again, but once in a while they veer drastically off course. This is what happened when Gingrich started telling voters along Florida's Space Coast that he would invigorate NASA by planning for an American colony on the moon. And if Romney decides to actually take the creatively distracting Trump with him on the campaign trail (not at all a slam dunk), I may yet be taking nominations in this space all week for a new euphemism. Feel free to send them along.

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

Tuesday on the NewsHour: Italian Prime Minister on the Financial Crisis

2012-02-03T11:15:40-04:00

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti arrives at the EU summit in Brussels on Jan. 30. Photo by Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP/Getty Images.

As European countries continue to struggle with how to resolve the region's financial crisis, one of the key voices in that effort is set to make an appearance on Tuesday's NewsHour. Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti plans to sit down with Margaret Warner in a rare interview with U.S. media.

Monti took over as prime minister in November after Silvio Berlusconi resigned in the shadow of personal scandals and Italy's debt crisis. With his economic and academic background, Monti was considered above the political fray and a departure from the colorful and controversial Berlusconi.

Monti's government has passed a 33 billion euro ($43.5 billion) package of spending cuts and tax increases. But he leads an unelected government mainly composed of technocrats and is getting pushback from trade unions and professional guilds such as lawyers against changing Italy's labor-market rules.

Warner and a NewsHour team are in Europe this month, covering high-level talks at the EU summit in Brussels (watch their video below) and preparing reports from German and Italian cities on the differing attitudes to austerity and debt.

See all of our coverage from Europe and follow us on Twitter.

Unemployment Dips to 8.3%, Lowest Rate in Three Years

2012-02-03T10:12:41-04:00

Recruiter Esther Aranza reviews job seeker Andrew Jack Jr.'s resume during a career fair in Texas. Photo by Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

The unemployment rate continued to trend downward Friday, reaching 8.3 percent, the lowest rate in three years. We calculate U-7, our own more inclusive statistic that adds the underemployed and those who want a job but have been out of work so long the government no longer counts them. U-7 is down to 16.9 percent for January. That's the lowest we've seen since we started tracking the figure in January 2010.

With a very healthy 243,000 new jobs added in January, the picture is certainly brightening. The last time the unemployment situation figures were this good was back in February 2009, President Obama's first full month in office. See The New York Times for more detail.

Note: "New Jobs Added, Revised" and "New Jobs Added Since Jan, 2012, Revised" will return in March.

Despite Friday's cheery numbers, a historically high level of unemployment persists. As we explained Thursday, the Gallup organization has a competing estimate for January, which turns out to be considerably more downbeat.

Gallup estimates an underemployment rate of 18.7 percent, and our U-7 total of the un- and underemployed still hovers above 27 million Americans. With that in mind we present an audacious proposal, backed up with some truly sobering historical justification, from our friend at Duke, economist William Sandy Darity. The professor first broached the idea of a federally guaranteed jobs program for every American two years ago at the annual economics meetings. We featured a video with his explanation on Making Sen$e, asking him tough questions about the proposal.

The essay, which you can read here, is forthcoming in the Review of Black Political Economy. For the skeptical, you might want to take a look at Darity's video explanation from 2009, above.

We're interested to know what you think of Darity's proposal. Let us know in the comments below.

This entry is cross-posted on the Making Sen$e page, where correspondent Paul Solman answers your economic and business questions. Follow Paul on Twitter.