Include a Victims Compensation fund the company said it will set up. With more on this alan kam, former nhtsa official and director of Highway Safety associates. Always welcome to the show. Good to have you here. Two engineers are being suspended and some outlets are naming ray dejorio, gary altman, one lead designer of the switch. The other a Cobalt Project manager. Are these guys going to becomescape quotes . Well they each have a different kind of problem. Mr. Degorgio signed off on the product change from the gm supplier of the ignition switch, which is delphi to beef up the ignition switch somewhat even though it still didnt meet gms own specifications. Years later in 2013, he was deposed under oath and in Product Liability case, melton versus gm and he said, and he testified under oath that he was unaware of any Product Design changes in the ignition switch. So senator mccaskill said at the Senate Hearing last week he is lying. That appears to be the case. Gerri changed his stories on the record it would appear. Tell me about gary altman . Gary altman was the product engineer manager on the chevy cobalt in the 20042005 time frame. It was his directive to close General Motors consideration of making any changes to the ignition switch to correct the problem. And the main reason given in the directive was cost. It was a business decision. And by the way that cost i heard figures of 57 cents or 90 cents per vehicle. That apparently was the Corporate Culture to be monitoring costs. So frankly i wonder, if mr. De giorgio was suspended for lying and if mr. Alt man was suspended for telling the truth, really putting in writing it is a cost consideration that they werent conducting a safety recall for a safety defect. Gerri alan, a lot of people are asking tonight, i asked if they would be scapegoats. The other question obviously is this going further . Will other theyre being paid while they are off and will this go higher . Wouldnt be good to hear from rick wagoner goner in. And mary bear ray said she first heard about the problem in january although been at the company for 33 years. Hard to believe that none of her predecessors didnt know about the problem. They were suspended with pay, effective paid vacation. You cant help but to wonder given a paid vacation, paid suspension as long as they dont implicate higherups . Gerri Company Bringing in nasa to figure out if the cars are safe. Is that unusual . Yes it is. When nhtsa was conducting its investigation of possible electronic problems with, concerning the toyota sudden unintended acceleration investigation nhtsa did bring in nasa to get consultation on electronic problems. Here you have a mechanical problem. It is not really an electronic problem. I wonder if it is something of a smoke screen. I cant believe General Motors doesnt know its own product and has to bring in space engineers to tell them about a mechanical problem with their own vehicle. That is pretty hard to believe. Gerri theyre takinge from logs of folks right now, i think mary barra is. I want to ask you about comments we got this week from a personal injury attorney, mr. Bob hilyard. Who talked about what should happen right now given the kind of problems that weve seen and in a case he is building in texas one of his clients they use ad single key on one of these cars that has been recalled and still had problems. Here is hilyard. Listen, gerri, there are two million vehicles right now on the roads of the United States that have this defect. And they can not yet be repaired. So regardless of how safely you drive, when you go home tonight after this show, a cobalt could lose control and hit you headon. There is nothing you can do about it. Gerri alan, he wants all the cars off the road. Do you agree with him. I agree with mr. Hilyard that the problem can occur and has occurred with motorist who is dont have extra weight on their key chain n fact one of the internal documents at General Motors that came out during the hearings indicated that mr. Altman was aware of this and thats why they started their investigation back around 2005. That the you can get this key off situation, even though there is nothing in the ignition but that individual key. It is, it is a potential time bomb that can happen at any moment when you go over a pothole or Something Like that. You can lose power in the vehicle. You can lose power steering and power brakes and of course the airbag could shut off. The car goes into the accessory position, about all that is working is the radio. Gerri wow. Alan, thanks for coming on the show tonight. The story continues and im sure you will be back with us to tell us more. Thank you so much. Thank you. Gerri from one fortune 500 to another, walmart going big on organics. Starting this month the big box retailer will sell a line of organic food at a big discount. Walmart says its organic food will sell 25 less than those sold elsewhere. We have the supermarket guru. Thanks for being on the show. You have the attention of lots and lots of folks out there. I want to ask you, why do you think walmart is doing this right now . What is the big deal . This is brewing for a bunch of reasons. Number one, organics are about the Fastest Growing product cat bother in supermarkets. Walmart, known for food, the biggest food retailer in the country, clearly doesnt attract those organic shoppers. But as were seeing more impact from the california drought, especially when it comes to organic beef, and a lot of organic produce, guess whats happening . Even the or granik shoppers are saying hey, we dont want to pay what it will cost at whole foods. This is benefiting walmart, number one, to be able to get those shoppers. Lets not forget the wild oats brand is owned by ron berkle, ukipa companies who bought fresh easy. Gerri a lot of Company Names there. Lets get back to walmart if we can. I thought it was interesting because we had skeptics in the moring meeting. Walmart customers will never buy organic food. That can never happen. Do you agree. Absolutely not. Everybody wants to buy organic. But lets not forget nutritionally there is difference between organic food an nonorganic foods. It is exactly the same from health standpoint. There are attributes when it comes to pesticides to the like but this will attract walmart shoppers and nonwalmart shoppers as well. Let me ask you this. You caught the glutenfree movement a charade basically. You dont believe organic foods are just out there to score the extra dough, do you. Oh absolutely. There is no question about that. Gerri you see no advantage to organic . It is a bad thing . You shouldnt pay up for it . From a nutritional standpoint there is no difference. It has been tested a lot. Keep in mind that what you got with organic foods is nongmo. There is lot of people who buy organic food who want to avoid gmo since there is no gmo labeling. Gerri and pesticides. No difference there is still over 100 different pesticides allowed in organic farming. It is not about all pesticide being eliminated. Gerri say our viewers disagree with you and they really want to go to these organic foods. Theyre willing to pay up for it. Here is what im wondering because walmart is saying they will bring the prices down, right . 25 below the products they already have on the shelf that are or ban i can. Could this put organic. Would this put pressure on whole food which my friend call whole paycheck and trader joes to reduce their prices . Yes. Keep in mind, whole food, their private label which is called 365 brand, that is already somewhere between 10 and 25 less than the brand names. So it is not where, walmart is saying oh well work on lower margins. It is the same lower margins you see in the private label brand that whole foods has. Gerri so youre tell me that whole foods is not more expensive than other supermarkets . The whole foods 365 brand. Their own store brand of organics, yes. Gerri but if you buy up on a some other brand name you might pay more. You will. One of the things that people really look for, and im wondering if it is worth it, phil, they look for the usda Certified Organic label. Does that make a difference . Sound like youre a total skeptic. No, im not at all. I think there is a place for organics. I would never buy an organic banana because i would buy organic raspberries because of very porous surface. U. S. Certified organic is critical especially we start to see a lot of imports from china, south america, that just says organic on it. We dont know if it is organic or not because the the usda is t certifying. That is the label you need to work for. Not just word organic but usda certified. Thanks for the information and interesting perspective thanks for coming on. Thank you, gerri. Gerri more to come this hour including now warnings for consumers on the heartbleed bug. We expose where most of your medicare dollars are really going. Which of those doctors are buddy, buddy, greasing the palms of their democratic lawmaker. Well tell you all about it. Why relocating manufacturingpany to upstate new york . I tell people its for the climate. The conditions in new york state are great for business. New york is ranked 2 in the nation for new private sector job creation. And now its even better because theyve introduced startup new york dozens of taxfree zones where businesses pay no taxes for ten years. Youll get a warm welcome in the new new york. See if your business qualifies at startupny. Com gerri new warning tonight about the heartbleed internet bug. Its a story we first told you about here last night. Now the feds are warning the nations banks to take action. Our senior washington correspondent peter barnes is here with more. Peter. Thats right, gerri, financial regulators are warning banks and Credit Unions about the heart breed bug and to fix it asap heartbleed. This is bug in part of open Source Software widely used in american companies. The federal Financial InstitutionsExamination Council which is a Standards Group that includes the fed, the fdic, the occ, says in a notice just put out ad 5 00 eastern that the bug could hurt Bank Encryption systems. The release says that with the bug, quote, attackers could potentially impersonate Bank Services or users, steal login credentials, access sensitive email or gain access to internal networks. The council is telling banks and Credit Unions to themselves or with their computer vendors to take proper steps to fix the bug. Gerri. Gerri peter, we asked this question last night actually. Could banks be in the crosshairs of some of these bad guys . And now youre saying regulators are warning banks. I have to ask you, what should people think about the safety of their Bank Accounts . We, obviously, if youre a Bank Customer and you see anything funny going on with your account or see some kind of weird email or something check with your bank. Make sure it is legitimate problem or legitimate request. Be vigilant. Gerri our expert said now is not the time to change the password. If you do have a problem the bad guys can see a change. This that is little advice for people out there. Thanks for the breaking news. Thank you, gerri. Gerri the white house we told you last night listing medicares top paid doctors. Turns out some of those superhigh billing physicians have been generously donating to the democratic party. Here is more is aei senior fellow and senior Political Columnist for the Washington Examiner tim carney. How close are these guys to congress and what is going on . Well if youve been following the news, particularly if youre following political corruption news you already know the name of the biggest medicare recipient as far as doctors go, solomon melgen who got caught up with corruption scandals related to democratic senator from new jersey, robert menendez. He is eye in florida and got in trouble for overbilling medicare and in fact had to pay back millions of dollars. Still after money paid back he is number one recipient of medicare money and given over 700,000, i think over a million, i will have to doublecheck numbers to democratic politicians and super pacs. This guy is going ahead and bankrolling democrats, possibly fleecing medicare, and then pocketing millions of taxpayer dime. Gerri the reports i have read, is that a lot of that money you described, 700,000, going to super pac that donated to senator menendez, who spoke to the feds on his behalf about this money. On his behalf. Gerri big investigation. Yeah. Gerri what about, there is the private jet story. Menendez borrowed his private jet, this doctors private jet. Yeah. Gerri these problems go back to 2007. How is it possible that all of this time later, seven years later were still talking about this issue . And yet, menendez did intervene on behalf of melgen in the medicare overbilling thing. I dont think he got his way. That led to him having to pay the money. But, so, what this highlights for me is how government getting involved in something, in this case medicare, ends up creating this breeding ground for corruption. So even if you think medicares a great idea and it is run perfectly you have to acknowledge this is a clear downside of it. That these doctors, see that political connection can help them get more taxpayer money. Which also, sort of makes capitalism into kind of the liberal stereotype of capitalism, oh, these guys are getting rich without even necessarily providing people what they need. If you fleece medicare, if you bill medicare a lot, you can get get money knowing how to deal with the bureaucracy without necessarily selling something that people want or need. Gerri there is another doc a cardiologist. Contributed to the president s campaign. The beat goes on. The other problem, tim, i think everybody complains about quality of data. This is the first time we had true details of medicare payments out. Not been public in the past. What does that tell you about how this whole bureaucracy works . We dont know where our tax dollars go. Gerri right. That is the bottom alignment the fact that we got this only because of a wall street journal lawsuit. Medicare has not wanted to release this under obama, under bush, going back. They have not wanted to release this. It is amazing that if you try to say, wait a second, tell me who is receiving federal payments . Gerri who is getting my money. You cant come close to getting that data. Gerri where does the taxpayer money go . They wont tell us. And they dont know. That is the thing. This was a case where they had some data they were keeping secret and went to average agency. Go to hhs which says they oversee this stuff, where are the Research Dollars for medical research, they really cant tell you that. Not that theyre trying to hide it. The information is not kept in coherent way. They dont even know it. If it was a company the accountants would all be fired. Gerri that is correct. Tim, thanks for coming on. Glad youre back on the show. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Gerri still to come. We have more, our nations electric grid, is enough being done that is to keep it safe . Smart watch, take a looking touted as the next big thing. Do you want one of these things . Would you pay 200 bucks for one . Are they worth it . Well answer that question. dad well, weve been thinking about it and were just not sure. agent i understand. dad weve never sold a house before. agent ill walk you guys through every step. dad so if we sell, do you think we can swing it . agent i have the numbers right here and based on the comps that ive found, the timing is perfect. Theres a lot of buyers for a house like yours. dad thats good to know. mom im so excited. When folks in the lower 48 think athey think salmon and energy. A, but the energy bp produces up here creates Something Else as well jobs all over america. Thousands of people here in alaska are working to safely produce more energy. But thats just the start. To produce more from existing wells, we need advanced technology. That means hitech jobs in california and colorado. The oil moves through one of the Worlds Largest pipelines. Maintaining it means manufacturing jobs in the midwest. Then we transport it with 4 stateoftheart, doublehull tankers. Some of the safest, most advanced ships in the world built in san diego with a 1 billion investment. Across the United States, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. And no Energy Company invests more in the u. S. Than bp. When we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. Thats not a coincidence. Its one more part of our commitment to america. You really love, what would you do . [ woman ] id be a writer. [ man ] id be a baker. [ woman ] i wanna be a pie maker. [ man ] i wanna be a pilot. [ woman ] id be an architect. What if i told you someone could pay you and what if that person were you . When you think about it, isnt that what retirement should be, paying ourselves to do what we love . Gerri smart fit. Look at this. It wont come on. New wearable gear that combines regular phone with functions forfeitness tracker. Gerri smart watches you heard all about them. Ive got one on right here. Take a look. See this . This is samsungs gear fit. You can see all kind of cool things doing this. Were about to describe it to tell you what it can do for you. Here so explain the wall street journals personal technology columnist, joanna stern. Joanna, welcome. Okay, im kind of transfixed by this now that you bought it on set. Yeah. Gerri i was skeptical before. You can play this thing. Tell me who it is for and what it allows you to do . Weve seen new generation of smart watches. Im wearing some stuff on my wrist but some of thighs things they bring notifications, notifications of text calls and other things puts it on your wrist of the other big category is fitness bands. This is the jawbone up. Gerri thats what i have. This tracks your steps. I think this is big future, that is what the samsung has done