education system. >> i have to go to school in the morning like 6:20 and school ended up around midnight. so it was-- stressed out. and mark sh >> lehrer: and mark shields and david brooks analyze the week's news. that's all ahead on tonight's newshour. major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> i mean, where would we be without small businesses? >> we need small businesses. >> they're the ones that help drive growth. >> like electricians, mechanics, carpenters. >> they strengthen our communities. >> every year, chevron spends billions with small businesses. that goes right to the heart of local communities, providing jobs, keeping people at work. they depend on us. >> the economy depends on them. >> and we depend on them. >> for three hours a week, i'm a coach, but when i was diagnosed with prostate cancer, i needed a coach. our doctor was great, but with so many tough decisions, i felt lost. united healthcare offered a specially trained r.n., who helped us weigh and understand all our options. for me, cancer was as scary as a fastball is to some of these kids, but my coach had hit that pitch before. >> turning data into useful answers. we're 78,000 people looking out for 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. united healthcare. >> bnsf railway. the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> lehrer: president obama took to the road today in his latest effort to woo the business community, and he appointed a major c.e.o. as an economic advisor. ray suarez begins our coverage. >> suarez: speaking at a general electric plant in schenectady, new york, president obama tried again today to highlight bright spots amid a sluggish economic recovery. >> and over the years, in the wake of these shifts, upstate new york and places like it have seen more than their fair share of hard times. but what has never changed-- we see it right here at this plant, we see it right here at g.e.-- is that america is still home to the most creative and most innovative businesses in the world. >> suarez: he used the event to name general electric c.e.o. jeffrey immelt to a new economic policy panel. >> the past two years were about pulling our economy back from the brink. the next two years, our job now is putting our economy into overdrive. our job is to do everything we can to ensure that businesses can take root, and folks can find good jobs, and america is leading the global competition that will determine our success in the 21st century. and so now, to help fulfill this new mission, i'm assembling a new group of business leaders and outside advisers. >> suarez: immelt said the new council would focus on manufacturing, trade and innovation. >> i'm now honored to lead your council on competitiveness and jobs. it's a great honor. ( applause ) and i know that, despite the fact that 60% of g.e.'s revenues are outside the united states, i, personally, and this company share in the responsibility and the accountability to make sure that this is the most competitive and productive country in the world. >> suarez: immelt had previously served on the economic recovery advisory board chaired by former federal reserve chairman paul volcker. today's announcement signals an administration shift from policies designed to stabilize the economy towards a renewed focus on boosting job growth. naming a prominent c.e.o. to head the panel underscored the president's recent attempts to shore up relations with the business community. immelt was one of 20 c.e.o.s who met with the president during a daylong summit at blair house last month, and one of 14 u.s. business leaders invited to meet with chinese president hu jintao at the white house this week. on tuesday, the president ordered a review of federal regulations on businesses which may hurt job creation. he wrote in "the wall street journal": "our economy is not a zero-sum game. regulations do have costs. often, as a country, we have to make tough decisions about whether those costs are necessary." meanwhile, yesterday, first lady michelle obama joined executives from walmart, the nation's largest retailer, to promote healthier eating habits. >> when i see a company like walmart launch an initiative like this, i feel more hopeful than ever before. >> suarez: and earlier this month, mr. obama named former commerce secretary and j.p. morgan chase executive william daley his new chief of staff. all of this comes after a series of moves to jumpstart private sector hiring, including a tax cut compromise that cheered wall street but angered liberals, and a long-awaited trade deal with south korea. but a new associated press poll released today shows a public still skeptical of the president's economic policies. while the president's personal approval rating improved to 53%, more than half of those surveyed disapprove of how he's handled the economy, and just 35% say it has improved on his watch. but nearly 75% said it's unrealistic to expect noticeable improvements after two years. >> brown: and we look further at all this with robert reich, former labor secretary in the clinton administration. he's now professor of public policy at the university of california, berkeley. his latest book, on the financial crisis, is titled "aftershock." and john makin is chief economist for caxton associates, a new york-based investment hedge fund, and a resident scholar at the american enterprise institute. >> john, i will start with you, what do you any of the president's latest moves to reach out to big business? >> i have very positive. you know, somebody once said i'm an economist. somebody once said an economy cyst somebody who won't take yes for an answer. look, the president i think had an epiphany on december 3rd when we saw that we still weren't create jobs. we had an unemployment rate of 9.8% and we really needed to get moving on this. so now we have the chief executive of general electric appointed as the head of the commission on jobs and competitiveness. so i think the president has got the message that it is really going to be necessary to do some things differently both in the area of regulatory tax and budget policy in order to get the economy moving and to generate some jobs. it is a good thing. >> robert reich, the emphasis on big business, how do you see it? >> well, certainly politically it is important for the president, for any president to maintain good relationships with the business community and to avoid being charged as anti-business. but it is very important that the president not be seduced into thinkinging that the interests of big business are the same as the interests of the american economy or for that matter the interest of american workers. big companies like general electric and others have made profits recently, indeed for the last 30 years but more intensively over the last ten years by actually cuttinging their payrolls by laying people off, by reducing wages and benefits. that is not going to be helpful to the american workforce. >> mr. makin, how does appointing the c.e.o. of a major company address the kind of concerns that the relationship had in the past. >> well, i think clearly the president did have an image problem with the business community. and i think many business leaders met with with the president and felt he just doesn't get it. the rhetoric on regulation is harming the economy. it's making businessmen hesitant about investing. i think the president's new tone where he is basically writing an op ed in the "the wall street journal" of all places about how we need to move toward more job reation and competitiveness. how we need to examine our regulatory policies is basically the right thing to do. >> and mr. reich's point that the interest of big business and everybody else aren't necessarily in sync? >> look f the pie gets bigger than it is a lot easier to discuss how you cut it up. and if the pie gets bigger, and by that i mean we create more jobs, then labor is going to be better off. we can argue about how we are goinging to divide it up later on. but right now we have an unemployment rate well over 9%. we have virtually zero job growth. we've created a few jobs, job growth is about less than a percent over the past year. we've got a problem. and if the president wants to cooperate with the business community and create more jobs, i'm all for it. >> robert reich you wrote recently looking at the situation that the president you thought was quote legitimizing a republican narrative on the economy. so fill in your argument here. what do you see happening? >>. >> well, the republican narrative is essentially there are problems have to do with big government, getting too big, and too intrusive and all we have to do is reduce government and we will all do better. and therefore reaching out to the business community, although politically necessary, freezing federal payrolls, freezing nondefense discretio discretion-- discretion air spending, having a deficit commission that is coming up with huge proposals to cut the deficit-- deficit mostly by spending cuts rather than tax increases, all of this does reinforce that republican story. there is another story though that i think is more accurate and also very important to be told and acted on. and that is the biggest reason we are having such a problem right now is the vast majority of americans don't have the wages, the salaries, the wherewithal to spend in the economy, to keep the economy going. and one reason they don't is after 30 years of outsourcing, of shaving payrolls, of putting pressure on unions to provide wage concessions and benefit concessions and also doing all sorts of things that reduce, automate that use the technologies to get rid of jobs, most americans just simply are not part of the global economy in terms of american prosperity any longer. >> and in that story, mr. reich, what would you think would be-- what should the president's posture towards big business be? >> well, again, i want to emphasize it's very important politically to maintain good relationships with big business but what the president has to do is lead the charge investing in education, in infrastructure, in job training, having a much more progressive income tax, expanding the earned income tax credit which is a wage subsidy. in other words, making sure that the vast majority of americans who have not benefited from make growth over much of the past 30 years actually do start benefitting. >> so john, this is a tale of two stories here. >> right. >> the way you see it, you can't do this without big business. >> well, look, i just-- i just totally disagree with rob reich on this. this is not a negative sum game. tax reform would be a great example. as the deficit commission has suggested and as the president has hinted, you pay her back tax preferences and reduce marginal tax rates, you can make the economy grow faster. remember tax preferences are regressive. that is they are more beneficial to the rich than they are to the poor. so there are lots of things you can do which business will like which will be good for employment and which will help the economy grow faster. >> let me ask you. looking at what he did today and in a recent week, is this enough for the business community or does he have to keep in a sense proving himself. >> well, sure, you know, the president has changed his rhetoric and a signaled that he would li to change some policies in a way that will help create jobs. and so that's a necessary but not a sufficient condition. what really has to happen next is that we have to change some policies. and i think we need to start with tax policy. and the president's giving signals and he is going to start in that area. if the president does things that annoy liberals like help cut corporate taxes, cut tax rates, pare back tax preferences and the economy starts to grow more rapidly, if the unemployment rate is closer to 8% a year from now than it is to 9%, he's going to be better off. >> mr. reich, you get the last word here. he is doing things that annoy liberals, right. >> i want to agree with john. this is not a zero sum game but i do want to emphasize that we are now experiencing in this country a degree of concentration of income and wealth at the top. we've not seen since 1928. trickle down economics has not worked. the median wage, the average wage for the typical american worker has gone absolutely nowhere. and we now have more unemployment and more long-term unemployment than we have seen in this country really ever before. if the american business community is goinging to make jobs, great, but american business is now globalized. ge is making 80% of its profits in its foreign operations. it's closed 14 factories in ohio over the last ten years. we've got to be realistic about what business can and can't do. businesses objective is to maximize profits. not maximize the benefits to the american worker. >> all right. we will leave it there. robert reich, john makin, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> brown: still to come on the newshour: the rehab road ahead for gabrielle giffords; pressure-packed schooling in south korea; and shields and brooks. but first, the other news of the day. here's kwame holman. >> holman: representatives from six world powers gathered in istanbul, turkey, today for talks with iran about its nuclear program. iranian delegates said they were off to a positive start. but they insisted a freeze on uranium enrichment is not open for discussion, since its program is for peaceful purposes. iran currently is under four sets of u.n. security council sanctions for its nuclear activities. about 2,000 tribesmen rallied today in northwest pakistan against u.s. drone attacks on taliban forces. the protest was in the town of miran shah in north waziristan, near the border with afghanistan. nearly 150 taliban fighters who control the area appeared to sanction the rally. protesters called for the arrest of u.s. officials responsible for the drone attacks. tunisians began three days of national mourning today for those who died in a month of protests that led to a change in government. meanwhile, the new governing coalition struggled to maintain calm. today, hundreds gathered outside government buildings for more protests against keeping any members of the old regime in power. police officers were seen joining their ranks, and protesters greeted them with hugs and kisses. members of a conservative house republican group are calling for even deeper spending cuts than their party's leadership has proposed. yesterday, the republican study committee wants to slash immediately at least $100 billion from non-defense related programs. the group also calls for a return to 2006 federal spending levels over the next decade. at a house democratic retreat in maryland today, congressman chris van hollen called it a bad idea. the full house is set to vote on wall street today, stocks had a mixed day of trading. the dow was helped by strong results from general electric, but weakness among technology stocks dragged the nasdaq down. the dow jones industrial average gained 49 points to close above 11,871. the nasdaq fell nearly 15 points to close at 2,689. for the week, the dow gained seven-tenths of a percent; the nasdaq fell nearly 2.5%. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to jim. >> lehrer: and to the next step in recovery for arizona congresswoman gabrielle giffords. judy woodruff has the story. >> woodruff: an ambulance took representative giffords from tucson's university medical center this morning, the first leg of her journey to a rehabilitation hospital in houston. the move came less than two weeks after giffords was shot in the head outside a tucson grocery store. before the transfer, giffords' husband, astronaut mark kelly, sent this tweet: "gg going to next phase of her recovery today. very grateful to the doctors and nurses at umc, tucson pd, sheriff's dept. back in tucson asap!" the ambulance headed to a nearby air force base, escorted by police and motorcyclists from a veterans organization. well-wishers lined the street and waved. from there, she was flown to houston, accompanied by kelly, her mother, gloria, her tucson trauma surgeon, peter rhee, and a nurse. she arrived at texas's tirr memorial hermann hospital, where her new team of doctors held a press conference late today. >> she's actually doing very well. this was a tangential gunshot wound. fortunately, it didn't go crosswise or right down through the center. it could have been a whole lot worse, and clearly did not damage large portions of her brain, did damage some portions. >> she looks spectacular, in all ways: from a neurological point of view. she came into i.c.u. and she was alert, awake, calm, comfortable. we were already feeling some interaction, which is important. she's very good movement on left side of body and very purposeful. we were testing her vision, and she didn't like us shining the light in her eye, and wanted to keep them closed. and these are good sign. she had good tone in her leg, which is a precursor to better recovery. as i say, she just looked spectacular. there are varying stages of what we call either paralysis or weakness. she has maybe some movements on her legs. she has tone. we're not seeing much tone or movements on her arm, but that's only over 30 minutes. some nurses have reported she had some movements in tucson. >> she has great rehabilitation potential. great rehabilitation potential. we will keep her busy and she will keep us busy, as well. >> when she squeezed my hand that first day-- the most encouraging thing -- when i saw her reaction to cheering confirms to me she knows what's going on. >> her personality's coming out with her touches, the way that she looks at us. for a deeper understanding of the role of rehabilitation in brain injury cases, we turn to two specialists: dr. alexander dromerick is co-director of the neuroscience research center at the national rehabilitation hospital, and practices at georgetown university hospital in washington. and dr. christina kwasnica is director of the neuro- rehabilitation program at barrow neurological institute at st. joseph's hospital in phoenix, arizona. >> thank you both for being with us. dr. dromerick, let me start with you with this new information that we heard from this medical team in houston. and i made some notes. alert, awake, calm. we just heard the nurse talk about a sense of awareness. the doctor talk about good movement on the left side of her body. they said not sure about movement in her arms and they said she seemed to want to keep her eyes closed when they shown a light. what does all that say to you? >> so, in the context of somebody who has had a gunshot wound to the brain, that's pretty good news. she is clearly awake for at least parts of the day. she's clearly aware of her surroundings. she's having meaningful interactions with people. and the left side of her body is moving well. sounds like the right side is maybe not moving so well based on what we heard from the neurosurgeon in texas. but you know, given that she is less than two weeks out from the injury, she's making pretty good progress. but it also suggests that the brain injury was pretty significant. >> woodruff: and dr. dromerick, they also revealed today that she has a drain in her head, excess fluid in the brain. what does that say to you? >> so that says to me that there's difficulty with the circulation of the spinal fluid, the cerebral spinal fluid that is not circulating and being reabsorbed the way it should be so t