manufactured promise? scott paul is the president of the alliance for american manufacturing, richard florida senior editor at the atlantic and prompt at the university of toronto and nyu. thank you for coming by. scott, the trend of manufacturing jobs has not been good. the economy just lost another 3,000 manufacturing jobs last month. even so, scott, you say you think the president can make that goal of creating 1 million new manufacturing jobs in four years. why are you so optimistic? chris tooen, christine, i think it s possible. i think it s an economic imperative to do it, to rebuild the middle class. first, there s the business cycle. i think that we should be seeing an upswing with housing starts. there s a lot of folks who need to buy automobiles, who have been putting that off for a long time. what we don t know about is europe and asia and how strong growth potential there is going to be. the other thing are these underlying factors. we do see energy costs quite low
it is tuesday, may 24th. we re getting a much better picture of the scope of the disaster that we re talking about in joplin, missouri, today where our ali velshi is. good morning. what are you seeing there? good morning, kiran, christine. i wish i could tell you it s a good morning in joplin. it simply isn t. over my shoulder you can see the remains of the medical center which in this vast area is really the only building of significance that is still standing. let s begin this morning with some breaking news, however. president obama in london this morning, is announcing that he will be coming here. he will be visiting joplin this sunday as soon as he gets back from his european trip. the president says he wants the folks here to know the government will do absolutely everything they can to make sure that there s recovery here. 30% of joplin is gone. it s decimated. right now hundreds of police, fire fighters, national guardsmen, other volunteers are searching for survi