John Stossel from Creators Syndicate

Insurance Is No Answer for 07/08/2009

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Health care "reformers" keep talking about getting us more health insurance (http://tinyurl.com/klu8gj). Then they talk about cutting costs. This is contradictory nonsense.

Insurance, whether private or a government Ponzi scheme like Medicare, means third parties pay the bills. When someone else pays, costs always go up.

Imagine if you had grocery insurance. You wouldn't ...

Updated: Wed Jul 08, 2009

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Health-Care Competition for 07/15/2009

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The statist establishment would love a single-payer health-care system like Canada's if it were politically achievable. Barack Obama said that if we were starting from scratch, single payer is what he'd back. But, thankfully, Americans are still libertarian enough to cringe at turning the medical system entirely over to government.

So with single payer out of reach, the fans of governmen ...

Updated: Wed Jul 15, 2009

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Arrogance for 07/22/2009

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.

Yet that is what some members of Congress presume to do. They intend, as the New York Times puts it, "to reinvent the nation's health care system" (http://tinyurl.com/mrjmon).

Let that sink in. A handful of people who probably never even ran a sma ...

Updated: Wed Jul 22, 2009

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A Minimum Wage Equals Minimum Jobs for 07/29/2009

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The media are never better at displaying their economic illiteracy than when they report on the minimum wage.

"Workers got a raise on Friday when the federal minimum wage was hiked 70 cents to $7.25 an hour," the Christian Science Monitor reported last week. "They'll be shouting, "Olé!" (http://tinyurl.com/kqq5ea).

They assume that if politicians declare t ...

Updated: Wed Jul 29, 2009

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Impossible Promises for 08/05/2009

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

I keep reading about health-care "reform," but I have yet to see anyone explain how the government can make it easier for more people to obtain medical services, control the already exploding cost of those services and not interfere with people's most intimate decisions.

You don't need to be a Ph.D. in economics to understand that government cannot do all three things. (Judging ...

Updated: Wed Aug 05, 2009

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Big Business Goes Big for Health-Care Reform for 08/12/2009

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand," Frank Rich wrote in Sunday's New York Times (http://tinyurl.com/nkqfy8).

That manipulation should disturb us. But contrary to Rich, it is not the work of "corporatists" who have sprung up to attack prog ...

Updated: Wed Aug 12, 2009

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Obamacare's Inevitable Logic for 08/19/2009

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

False charges about Obamacare don't help.

Like the end-of-life tempest. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin popularized the term "death panels." She said: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of p ...

Updated: Wed Aug 19, 2009

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Competition for 08/26/2009

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Choice, competition, reducing costs — those are the things that I want to see accomplished in this health reform bill," President Obama told talk-show host Michael Smerconish last week (http://tinyurl.com/nb7r87).

Choice and competition would be good. They would indeed reduce costs. If only the president meant it. Or understood it.

In a free market, a business tha ...

Updated: Wed Aug 26, 2009

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Clunker Legislation for 09/02/2009

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The economic illiterates in Washington are so impressed with the "success" of Cash for Clunkers that they're readying Cash for Clunker Appliances (http://tinyurl.com/kqfoe8). The ludicrous "stimulus" bill gave $300 million to the Department of Energy to provide rebates for 10 types of appliances that have been rated energy efficient.

Before government extends Cash for ...

Updated: Wed Sep 02, 2009

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Obama's Speech Tonight for 09/09/2009

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

I wish President Obama would say to Congress: Members of Congress, I ask you to address our fiscal emergency.

In 1964, President Johnson won a landslide victory — quite similar to mine. His election also brought liberals into Congress. The next year, they created the first government-run health care plan: Medicare.

They meant well, but unfortunately, this was the height of f ...

Updated: Wed Sep 09, 2009

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I'm Moving to Fox for 09/14/2009

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

It's time for a change. Next month, I leave ABC News to start a weekly one-hour prime time show on FBN, the Fox Business Channel, and contribute to various programs on Fox News.

When I announced that on my blog (http://tinyurl.com/quu9j5), plenty of viewers said they were happy to have me leave.

"Goodbye. You suck. You have found a much better home for your garbage reporting ...

Updated: Mon Sep 14, 2009

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Going to Fox II for 09/23/2009

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

When I announced last week that I was leaving ABC for Fox (http://tinyurl.com/oyty5j), some readers complained about my "bias." I replied: "Every reporter has political beliefs. The difference is that I am upfront about mine."

Look at today's burning issue: President Obama's pledge to redesign 15 percent of the economy. Virtually every reporter calls his health care p ...

Updated: Wed Sep 23, 2009

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Success No Matter What for 09/30/2009

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

This Friday, September's job-loss total will be announced. Whatever the numbers, administration officials surely will tell us that life is better — because of them. "We brought the global economy back from the brink," President Obama said at the close of the G-20 meeting last week. "(B)ecause of the bold and coordinated action that we took, millions of jobs have been saved ...

Updated: Wed Sep 30, 2009

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Transfer Machine for 10/07/2009

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul," George Bernard Shaw once said.

For a socialist, Shaw demonstrated good sense with that quotation. Unfortunately, America has become a laboratory in which his hypothesis is being tested.

The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to ...

Updated: Wed Oct 07, 2009

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What's Michael Moore Talking About? for 10/14/2009

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Michael Moore is confused.

His new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story," begins by suggesting that all was well until Ronald Reagan became president and cut the top 90 percent income tax rate. Everything was downhill from there.

But by the end of the movie, he says the problems really began in 1945, when Franklin Roosevelt died without enacting his proposed Second Bill of R ...

Updated: Wed Oct 14, 2009

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A Nobel Prize for Showing That Freedom Works for 10/21/2009

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Pundits and politicians act as if government can solve almost any problem. At the slightest hint of trouble, the ruling class reflexively assumes that knowledgeable, wise and public-spirited government regulators are capable of riding to the rescue. This certainly is the guiding philosophy of the Obama administration.

So how remarkable it is that this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in econo ...

Updated: Wed Oct 21, 2009

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Self-Governance Works for 10/28/2009

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Much of what government does is based on the premise that people can't do things for themselves. So government must do it for them. More often than not, the result is a ham-handed, bumbling, one-size-fits-all approach that leaves the intended beneficiaries worse off. Of course, this resulting failure is never blamed on the political approach — on the contrary, failure is taken to mean the ...

Updated: Wed Oct 28, 2009

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The Double Standard About Journalists' Bias for 11/04/2009

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

I made The New York Times last week. It even ran my picture. My mother would be proud.

Unfortunately, the story was critical. It said, "Critics have leaped on Mr. Stossel's speaking engagements as the latest evidence of conservative bias on the part of Fox."

Which "critics" had "leaped"? The reporter mentioned Rachel Maddow. I wouldn't think her criti ...

Updated: Wed Nov 04, 2009

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The U.S. House of Presumptuous Meddlers for 11/11/2009

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

As an American, I am embarrassed that the U.S. House of Representatives has 220 members who actually believe the government can successfully centrally plan the medical and insurance industries.

I'm embarrassed that my representatives think that government can subsidize the consumption of medical care without increasing the budget deficit or interfering with free choice.

It's a tri ...

Updated: Wed Nov 11, 2009

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Worse Than Taxes for 11/18/2009

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bill O'Reilly is mad at me because I'm not mad enough about taxes.

Last week on "The O'Reilly Factor" (http://tinyurl.com/yja5qno), we talked about California's and New York's enormous budget deficits and planned tax increases. Those states would have big surpluses had they just grown their governments in pace with inflation. But of course they didn't. Now the politic ...

Updated: Wed Nov 18, 2009

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