All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

>Don Teague is a CBS News Correspondent in the Dallas bureau.

There are three words that bring joy to the hearts of parents, and dread to their children. Three words that feel like freedom for grownups, and prison for kids. Three words, that seem to get more expensive every year:

Back to School

I have to admit, that even 25 plus years after graduating high school, I still get a little nervous adrenaline rush on the first day of a school year. I guess most of us never completely recover from high school.

In Texas, about 4.8 million public school students went back to school this morning after the long summer break, my two teenaged daughters among them. They joined millions of other kids around the country who are now trying to figure out if they got the hard history teacher or the easy one, a good locker location or a bad one, if this will finally be the year they keep that pledge to do their homework early.

I, on the other hand, am joining the millions of parents doing serious checkbook math today, trying to figure where all the money went.

I actually know where it went. I just can’t quite believe it.

Katie is on assignment.

It's been a stressful day for some of the nation's biggest banks. Government stress tests show some, like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, are low on cash.

The tests set up a "what if" scenario.

What would happen if unemployment were to jump to 10.3 percent and home prices were to plunge another 22 percent?

The results show some big banks wouldn't survive, even after billions in bailout money.

Banks with failing grades will have six months to raise the funds, possibly by issuing stock or bonds, or from the government as a last resort, but Washington insists it won't let them fold.

For customers, it will be business as usual.

Your money is protected by the FDIC, although analysts warn banks scrambling to boost revenue may just keep raising those annoying fees - putting a bigger dent in your wallet. That could send you to the doctor - for your own stress test.

Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative correspondent for CBS News.

---

It took a full month for many in Congress and the American public to realize that billions in bailout funds were not going to be used the way they thought.

Instead of purchasing failed mortgage assets, the Treasury Department used the taxpayer money to buy preferred shares of stock in select banks. It was not only weak banks in need of assistance, but also banks supposedly deemed to be "strong" by federal regulators; the idea apparently to help shore up the economy by ensuring strong banks take over weaker ones (although nobody from the Treasury Department has responded to our repeated requests for information).

Sources tell CBS News the bank strategy was not discussed in advance with important members of Congress who were "sold" on the bailout. Sources also say the strategy was not mentioned to top members who spoke directly with Treasury Secretary Paulson. But in the first weeks of the bailout, select banks become in-the-know quickly. Several of them have said it was "federal regulators" who approached them and urged them to apply for bailout money ... even before the public or Congress were aware this would be its use ...

Read full post…

The economic crisis is taking its toll on every corner of the nation, sometimes in unbelievable ways. One suburban Detroit school district is going to start charging teachers for electricity: 32 bucks to plug in a personal coffee pot – $182 for a mini-fridge.

Their schools, like so many others in America, are low on cash, and have already resorted to layoffs and hiring freezes. The reason: State budgets are strapped. Higher unemployment means lower income tax revenue, and empty stores mean less cash from sales tax.

Three-quarters of the states are facing deficits next year: six billion dollars here in New York, five billion in Florida, $26 billion in California.

This serious crisis calls for creative solutions, no doubt. I'd just hate to be that teacher paying $182 to chill the brown bag lunch I brought to work … in order to save money.

Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative correspondent for CBS News.

---

Fake occupations like "lover"? Non-existent zip codes like "00000"? Imaginary people like "Doodad Pro"? Neither campaign appears to corner the market on odd entries from the donor files.

But with Obama receiving many more individual donations, a stunningly larger total (Obama's got more than $603 million to McCain's $358 million), and -depending who you ask - an impressive (or suspicious) month of record fundraising in September, some are trying to take a closer look at Obama's stats.

"He's been taking in a lot of money very rapidly," says Sheila Krumholz who heads up the Center for Responsive Politics. She says ...

Read full post…

It's ironic in an Alanis Morissette kind of way that gas prices are down now that the summer travel months are behind us. A USA Today poll from earlier in the year found that a third of Americans canceled vacations because of pain at the pump.

But in the past few days, gas station managers couldn't change those signs fast enough. The prices are dropping quickly…back to below three dollars a gallon in many areas. Crude oil…which makes up a big chunk of the price of gas…has fallen 44 percent since the spring.

Not to be the black fly in your chardonnay, but cheaper gas is kind of a mixed blessing. It means demand is down and people are spending less.

Some economists say it's a harbinger of a coming recession and possibly more job losses. If that's true, those four dollar gallons we bemoaned might have been a good thing. That's either ironic, or just the law of supply and demand economics.

Since 1989, the National Debt Clock has been a fixture in Manhattan's Times Square. After you've dropped a cool $200 on a Broadway Show, a glimpse of its ominous ticker might deter you from that $20 nightcap.

And now, that clock has run out of numbers. Our national debt, now at $10.2, is one digit larger than the spots available on the sign.

When real estate mogul Seymour Durst created the clock back in 1989, the debt was at $2.7 trillion. Since 2003, it has grown by half a trillion each year, and the bailout Congress just signed will likely kick that number up even higher by the end of 2008.

But rather than retiring the debt sign, the Dursts will redesign it to include enough spaces for a quadrillion.

Expanding the credit line when money is tight - isn't that how we got into this mess in the first place? The debt clock literally is a sign of the times.

Sharyl Attkisson is investigative correspondent for CBS News.

---

Back in 1972, a Republican convention corporate contributions scandal shook things up. Executives from the International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. had allegedly met secretly with Nixon administration officials – and offered to underwrite the Republican convention. In return, the Justice Department was allegedly urged to "go easy" on ITT in a pending anti-trust lawsuit. ITT ended up with what was widely regarded as a favorable out-of-court settlement.

To eliminate the appearance of tainted funding, election law was changed. The idea was to provide public funds for the conventions and limit corporate contributions. But things haven't really worked out that way. Here's why.

Corporations are still allowed to donate money through convention "host committees" (committees that presumably help promote the locality that's holding the convention). But the "host committee" exemption has become a giant loophole exploited by corporations seeking influence – and politicians eager to provide it. Corporate contributions have soared from just $1 million in 1980 to an estimated $112 million for 2008.

Tonight on the CBS Evening News our Follow the Money story will talk about what some corporate donors "get" in exchange for their generous contributions ...

Read full post…

Sharyl Attkisson is the Capitol Hill Correspondent for CBS News.

---

Rep. Paul Kanjorski, was just trying to do something great for his hometown: He got several million federal tax dollars to build an office building in Nanticoke, Penn., so that a major business had a place to operate and bring several hundred jobs to town. It was named the Kanjorski Center. But a few years ago, the business moved out of the city-owned Kanjorski Center, leaving Nanticoke stuck paying the $15,000 a month bill for the empty building.

Kanjorski's follow up plan was to build a city-owned parking garage for the empty city-owned Kanjorski Center in hopes of attracting new tenants. Once again, he turned to federal taxpayers for help, earmarking more than $5 million for the Kanjorski Center parking garage project.

Critics say federal tax dollars aren't meant to buy economic stimulus projects for every Congressman's hometown – there isn't enough money to go around as it is. Further objections came from local officials who said Kanjorski shouldn't be able to use an earmark to force the city to build and own another liability: a parking garage ...

Read full post…

Sharyl Attkisson is investigative correspondent for CBS News.

---

For years, members of Congress have been investigating financial ties between pharmaceutical companies and the government, doctors and researchers, research hospitals, colleges and universities. Sen. Charles Grassley, who has most recently been digging into money links between drug companies and the American Psychiatric Association, puts it this way: “I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of nonprofit organizations that purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions.”

In a letter to its members, the APA says it supports complete transparency and plans to provide Grassley with the information he's requested: "a complete accounting of APA revenues, except from advertising in our journals, from pharmaceutical companies, starting in 2003." The APA notes: "We are not alone; recent public focus on relationships between medicine and the pharmaceutical industry is a challenge for the whole field of medicine."

Indeed, the APA is not alone in being the subject of public focus and scrutiny for its relationships with the pharmaceutical industry. Tonight, on the CBS Evening News, we dig into the allegations of financial conflicts of interest among some widely-quoted "independent" voices in the debates over vaccine safety. We weren't as lucky as Grassley ...

Read full post…