at least 12 deaths are being blamed on the storms. those deaths caused mostly by falling trees and some power lines. athena jones is live in forecast, virginia, this morning in fairfax county, virginia, this morning. virginia is one of three states declaring emergency. how many people are without power there? reporter: good morning. well, hundreds of thousands of people are without power still in virginia. and across the d.c. heart area. we re in springfield, which is just outside of washington, d.c. if you look behind me, you see an example of why so many people still don t have power. this is a major series of lines delivering power to the homes and businesses around here. you see a large tree fell on the lines bringing many of them down. actually it killed a 27-year-old man on friday night who was in his car when the tree fell on it. you see the transformer came down when the utility pole it was on snapped into three pieces. and so this is an example of what the worker
this week we learned that the measure of consumer confidence fell for the fourth month in a row to its lowest levels since january. you may disagree with why it s down. but, again, the customer who in this case is the american consumer is always right when it comes to the economy. why? because if americans are worried about the economy, they delay making important purchases and a perceived economic slowdown can easily become a reality. okay. so it s happening. but why? well, probably the biggest reason is this jobs. 20 straight months of job growth. yes. but over the last five months, look at that trend. roughly corresponding to the drop in consumer confidence, hiring in america has slowed. a week from now we ll have the job creation numbers for june to see where this trend is going. but until we have a strong jobs recovery, americans are going to hold back. and that is going to hamper a wider recovery. frankly, there is good and real reason to be nervous. it s that economi
florida for us. thanks so much. coming up, going the distance. to man walking 100 miles tomorrow to raise money for military kids who lost a parent in the combat. he s calling it the hell walk. plus a youth hockey coach under investigation accused of tripping a 13-year-old player on the opposing team. did you catch that? we ll show it to you and it is our news nation gut check. check out our facebook page. behind the scenes pictures. [ music playing, indistinct conversations ] the charcoal went out already? [ sighs ] forget it. [ male announcer ] there s more barbeque time in every bag of kingsford charcoal. kingsford. slow down and grill.
budget, for the reconciliation process, which you know, they need a majority in the senate to do. so that s another reason they re going to use it in the campaign, going to be hammering it. it s not all about the presidency. it s also about the senate. the bill does have a lot of taxes in it. that s a real thing. there are significant hundreds of billions of dollars of tax increases in that bill. they re just not the individual mandate. the individual mandate is not a big tax increase. republicans have been saying since the bill passed this is a huge tax increase and they are not wrong that it s a tax increase, but the mandate is not where it s coming from. up until now they haven t gotten traction on that argument. it is complicated, as is evident. is governor mitt romney s talk of repeal and replace a dead end? that s next. [ music playing, indistinct conversations ]
constitutional right to free speech, writing that, quote: one of the costs of first amendment is that it protects the speech we detest as well the speech we embrace. the former penn state assistant football coach convicted of child sex abuse will likely get to keep his taxpayer funded pension. it s reportedly about $59,000 a year. apparently jerry sanduskyy s crimes are not among those that require people to forfeit their retirement pay. state officials in pennsylvania are reportedly looking into options to get around that. a judge is set to sentence the 68-year-old excoach in several months. last week, a judge convicted sandusky of sexually abusing 10 boys over a period of more than a decade. a major shakeup in the battle of the morning shows. after weeks of speculation ann curry has announced she is out at the today show. well, mostly out. and she won t be going far. the teary see you later next. [ music playing, indistinct conversations ]