Welcome back to jans & co. toyota will pay fines to settle a government investigation into two big safety recalls. the fines were so big because the company didn t tell customers what it knew about those safety issues. america s population growth has dropped to its lowest level since the great depression. the new 2010 census will reveal that statistic later today. with more people moving to the south and west, it s expected republicans will pick up more seats during redistricting. tracy morgan will miss two episodes of 30 rock. he is having a kidney transplant. the surgery was a success, but he ll need time to recover. bids are up to $11,700 for the purse used to fight off that florida gunman. all proceeds from the auction will go to charity. the entire incident inside that school berd meeting was captured on camera. no one was hurt there, but the shooter did take his own life.
Own out of her driveway and slammed into a stonewall and fortunately she was not seriously hurt and the incidents are only adding, of course to toyota s troubles, in this wake of these massive safety recalls, joining us now from capitol hill is a lawmaker, who has been very vocal on this issue, republican congressman darrell issa of california. he s the ranking member of the house oversight and government reform committee. congressman, always good to have you with us. welcome back. thanks for having me back and thanks for keeping an eye on this important subject, as finally nhtsa, toyota and our committee are doing the same, going out and looking at every one of these accidents, or near accidents, and trying to figure out if there is a thread of actual failure in one or more of these various events around the country. martha: i mean, this could not be worse pr for toyota. to the extent that, you know, some people have even questioned the validity of it and we re playing the tape for
For granted that this isn t real, just the opposite and we are looking into every one of them and nhtsa is reacting on a quick basis with the forensic people, so we can go vehicle by vehicle and i do not expect the vehicle to be released back onto the road until it has been tested like no other prius. martha: but, that is the problem. i think, people are very nervous, they are not believing what they are hearing about what the cause of all of this is. and i think it was ray lahood, got in a heap of trouble at one point make a generalization, about the not getting into the cars and if i had a prius in my driveway i would be nervous driving it, right now. should people be nervous driving these cars? you know, i think if you look at it statistically and look at the millions of cars out there, and you look, manufacturer by manufacturer, how many of them have safety recalls, not applied, i think you can feel statistically safe. but, if you don t feel personally safe, toyota has a program
It s great to have you here. i know you ll be listening so we ll follow up tomorrow, okay. all right. tony harris, everything starts in your hour, my friend. yeah. it looks like we get started in just a couple of minutes. i just saw some movement in the room, in the hearing room. we ve got a full show for you. i can t wait to see the testimony. it looks like that s going to happen from the top man at toyota. ali is here, paul is going to stick around with us and we are ready to rock and roll. all right, we ll debrief tomorrow. good to see you, tony. have a great day. welcome, everybody, it is wednesday, the 24th day of february. he is the man of the hour. cnn live coverage as congress questions toyota s president about his company s safety recalls and the way he has handled it. on the story, congressional correspondent brianna keilar covering the house oversight committee hearing, chief business correspondent ali velshi is here focusing on the financial fallout on toyota an
Toyota. it s an interesting fix here. this is a laptop computer, kyra. this is literally what they do. they hook up this laptop with the cord into right by your brake pedal here. this is the software problem that they re fixing to fix the brake in the prius. mike, the general manager, has been nice enough to let us come to the dealership. what does this mean for your business dealing with these three massive safety recalls. well, it s bringing a lot of toyota owners from other dealerships in. we re meeting people we ve never met before so that s one positive thing. reporter: what are you doing in terms of satisfies your customers, not losing people to other brands. we re doing as much as we possibly can. we re picking cars up, dropping them off. we ve extended our hours from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. we ve got breakfast, lunch and dinner out there. we ve got extra shuttle vans driving people home. whatever it takes. reporter: thank you for accommodating us today. kyra, we ll hear mor