with tony hayward. clearly those aren t working. they have ads with a guy name darryl willis who is heading up the claims process for bp. in case viewers haven t been subjected to it i want to play a little bit of this ad. i was born and raised in louisiana. i volunteered for this assignment, because this is my home. i ll be here in the gulf as long as it takes to make this right. you actually know this guy. why does it make you mad? it makes me mad every time i see it. i don t consider this gentleman an honorable man. he doesn t follow up on his promises. he has no compassion for us whatsoever. what they say in the ad is the perfect example of how to lie with statistics. they talk about $100 million given away. you know what? our annual tourism revenue is $2.3 billion. you look at the coast, we re probably $7 to $8 billion.
four years ago? obviously the election is coming. the interesting thing is it seems like obama does have a petty good hand in differentiating himself from the incumbent democrats in congress and the status quo. where people will say, hey, listen, i think the president s okay, but the democrats in congress are an abomination. so if nothing else i think you re exactly right. let s move on to arizona because the mid-term elections will be months from this, we don t need to do too much today, it s a friday. jan brewer, in arizona, trying to rebrand her state s image after the controversial immigration law. she s forming a tourism task force to address what she calls mistruths about the law. meantime, austin, texas has become the latest city to ban all official travel to arizona. about 40 groups now have cut ties with arizona so far. at least on an official level. the state stands of course to lose millions in tourism revenue. which is a huge part of that state s business. a new vid
measured in different ways. among them, the opportunities and businesses lost. for example, the latest figures available show that the gulf s recreational fishing industry is worth an estimated $8 billion. when it comes to commercial fishing in louisiana alone, seafood is worth $2.4 billion each year. and don t forget the tourism dollars. along the mississippi gulf coast, tourism brought in $1.6 billion last year. nearly 1/3 of mississippi s entire tourism revenue. so a lot of folks rely on the gulf coast not only as a place to live but as a place to earn their living. in areas like venice, louisiana and beyond where some are just getting back on their feet after hurricane katrina and eick. this disaster threatens to knock them down all over again. you guys hang on. here we go. shepard: michael his has been running sports fishing charters pretty much all his life. your tuna, dolphin, marlin, big game species.
virginia s republican governor bob mcdonnell declaring april is confederate month. it sparks anger among civil rights leader and others. mcdonnell saying it will promote state tourism leading up to its 150 athanniversary of the civil war next year. the declaration honors the men, they say, who fought in the war but it makes no mention of slavery, for instance. former virginia governor douglas wilder the grandson of slaves himself, called the omission mind-boggling. matt, your view on whether it s virginia or any formally confederate state that would use a confederate celebration, absent the acknowledgement of slavery is a mechanism to generate tourism revenue. virginia i think has four ongoing things that they re honoring right now, including organ donation and child safety month. but april i guess was just to create confederate month here in the commonwealth of virginia. my take is i think it is entirely fitting and proper and
going in the ocean has been ruled out, forbidden because the risk of downing is intense. riptides and rip currents persist. we have seen a few surfers earlier today. as you can see right now, not a person, not a surfer, nobody in the water when it s been a absolute washout of a memorial day weekend. the governor of florida, rick scott, his emergency operations center is fully staffed. he said they re taking this storm seriously and he thinks everybody else should as well. take a listen. i know the state is ready and i ve talked to sheriffs in the panhandle. we re having updates. everybody is ready for this. i hope it s not bad at all. the real impact of this storm has been tens of millions of dollars in tourism revenue that have been completely lost. a lot of hotels had