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John Stossel: The harm Obamacare's already inflictingJOHN STOSSEL Published Dec 23, 2011 at 3:00 am (Updated Dec 22, 2011) President Obama says his health care “reform” will be good for business. Business has learned the truth. Three successful businessmen explained to me how Obamacare is a reason that unemployment stays high. Its length and complexity make businessmen wary of expanding. Mike Whalen, CEO of Heart of America Group, which runs hotels and restaurants, said that when he asked his company’s health insurance experts to summarize the impact of Obamacare, “the three of them kind of looked at each other and...

<p>School spending has gone through the roof and test scores are flat.</p> <p>While most every other service in life has gotten faster, better, and cheaper, one of the most important things we buy -- education -- has remained completely stagnant, unchanged since we started measuring it in 1970.</p>

Maybe Herman Cain is trying too hard to be likable. He doesn’t need to enter attack mode or anything, but it would help if he didn’t pander to lefty media hosts, either. I have to assume that’s what this is — unless Cain really doesn’t think it’s the government’s business to ban abortion?Last night, Cain told Piers Morgan that “life begins at conception� and said he opposes abortion “in all cases.� But when Morgan pressed him with typical questions about whether Cain would want his daughter or granddaughter to have a child conceived by rape or incest, Cain dodged. First,...

On Thursday night's "Stossel Show," which airs on the Fox Business channel, Brian Brown was unable to convince host John Stossel or his libertarian guest (and nationally syndicated columnist) David Harsanyi that civil marriage for gays and lesbians harms, or even changes, marriage between heterosexual couples. In fact, Harsanyi's suggestion that the marriage debate could be solved if the U.S. decided either to privatize all schools or all marriage contracts was treated as a more legitimate idea by Stossel and Stossel's audience.... "It is a mistake to allow government to define what marriage should be -- gay or not," Harsanyi...

The other day, I went to Times Square to ask people what government should do to help poor people. Most everyone agreed on the answer: "more social programs and a higher minimum wage." It's intuitive to think that way. I used to think that, too. When President Johnson declared a "war on poverty," he said "compassionate government" was the road to prosperity for poor people. That made sense to me. At Princeton, I was taught that government's central planners had the solution to poverty. But then I watched them work. Government spent trillions of dollars on poverty programs, and the...

A story in today's Philadelphia Daily News shows why it's so important that citizens be allowed to videotape cops - it can be citizens' only way to fight back against police abuse of power. This incident happened several weeks ago in Philadelphia to Mark Fiorino, a 25-year-old IT worker who carries a gun on his hip at all times for self defense. He got the gun after several friends were mugged. But he didn't count on attacks by police: On a mild February afternoon, Fiorino, 25, decided to walk to an AutoZone on Frankford Avenue in Northeast Philly with the...

he anti-war movement was all over the news before President Obama was elected. But apparently they weren’t really anti-war ... they were just anti-President Bush. Two college professors just released a study of national protests between 2007 and 2009. What did they find? … After January 2007, the attendance at antiwar rallies [measured in] roughly the tens of thousands, or thousands, through the end of 2008. … After the election of Barack Obama as president, the order of magnitude of antiwar protests dropped [...] Organizers were hard pressed to stage a rally with participation in the thousands, or even in...

Is America becoming a nation of freeloaders? It’s said that Panhandlers in America can make more than minimum wage. John Stossel tried it in Manhattan, and sure enough, I made over $11 in one hour—that would be $23,000 a year—tax free! It’s a small example of why some said that the USA is turning into a nation of freeloaders. The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Macdonald says that beggars she’s encountered “have the most deep-seated sense of entitlement that I’ve ever come across.” From those defaulting on their home mortgages, to those who see lawsuits as a lottery ticket, many Americans live...

In America today, the biggest recipients of handouts are not poor people. They're corporations. General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt is super-close to President Obama. The president named Immelt chairman of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Before that, Immelt was on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He's a regular companion when Obama travels abroad to hawk American exports. (Why does business need government to do that?) "Jeff Immelt is perhaps the CEO who is most cozy with President Obama," says journalist Tim Carney. "General Electric is structuring their business around where government is going ... high-speed rail, solar, wind....

Why is it so difficult for some conservatives to accept the idea that the left is hellbent on destroying America as we know it? It’s not like it’s a far-out conspiracy theory. It’s a well documented ongoing process. These people have been at it for decades. The Cloward-Piven Strategy, which is one piece of the subversive puzzle, is real. We’ve proven it here at NewsReal and I’ve proven it in my upcoming book Subversion Inc. Since the culturally catastrophic 1960s elements within the left have been more or less open about their movement’s desire to overthrow the American system of...

Talking to Megyn Kelly.

My new special – Politicians’ Top 10 Promises Gone Wrong – airs again tonight. One of their failed promises is that if government fosters home ownership, that will benefit most everyone. President Clinton even claimed: “Our homeownership strategy will not cost the taxpayers one extra cent.” Bush was on board: “We want more people owning their own home. It is in our national interest.” Most politicians agreed. But those conceits, like so many others, went horribly wrong. When the housing bubble popped and millions lost their homes many blamed greedy bankers. Senator Bernie Sanders complained that: “Outrageous greed, recklessness and...

FBN's John Stossel dissects lawmakers' false promises in new special

Of the 6 billion people on Earth, 2 billion try to survive on a few dollars a day. They don't build businesses, or if they do, they don't expand them. Unlike people in the United States, Europe and Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc., they don't lift themselves out of poverty. Why not? What's the difference between them and us? Hernando de Soto taught me that the biggest difference may be property rights. I first met de Soto maybe 15 years ago. It was at one of those lunches where people sit around wondering how to end...

This week, I held a bake sale -- a racist bake sale. I stood in midtown Manhattan shouting, "Cupcakes for sale." My price list read: Asians -- $1.50 Whites -- $1.00 Blacks/Latinos -- 50 cents People stared. One yelled, "What is funny to you about people who are less privileged?" A black woman said, angrily, "It's very offensive, very demeaning!" One black man accused me of poisoning the cupcakes. I understand why people got angry. What I did was hurtful to some. My bake sale mimicked what some conservative college students did at Bucknell University. The students wanted to satirize...

And then talks to Bill O'Reilly about it.

"I thought unions were great -- until at Chrysler, the union steward started screaming at me. Working at an unhurried pace, I'd exceeded 'production' for that job." That comment, left on my blog by a viewer who watched my show about unions, matches my experience. No one ordered me to slow down, but union rules and union culture at ABC and CBS slowed the work. Sometimes a camera crew took five minutes just to get out of the car. Now unions conspire with politicians to rip off taxpayers. Steve Melanga of the Manhattan Institute complains that politicians get union political...

It's raining! I don't like it! Why hasn't Congress passed the Good Weather Act and the Everybody Happy Act? Sound dumb? Why is it any dumber than a law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which promised to cover more for less money? When Obamacare was debated, we free-market advocates insisted that no matter what the president promised, the laws of economics cannot be repealed. Our opponents in effect answered, "Yes, we can." Well, Obamacare has barely started taking effect, and the evidence is already rolling in. I hate to say we told them so, but ... we...

Taxing the Rich By John Stossel Progressives want to raise taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year because they say it's wrong for the rich to be "given" more money. Sunday's New York Times carries a cartoon showing Uncle Sam handing money to a fat cat. They just don't get it. As I've said before, a tax cut is not a handout. It simply means government steals less. What progressives want to do is take money from some -- by force -- and spend it on others. It sounds less noble when plainly stated.

The Left, even the Obama Administration, has vilified Fox News as an extreme right wing shill; they see Fox as dedicated to their destruction. Until recently the better understanding of Fox is that of a brilliant business plan to tap an unserved niche in the news marketplace. While obvious to anyone who lives in a town smaller than a million people, prior to Fox nobody was providing news without a strong leftward bent. Fox stepped in like a blast of fresh air and eventually dominated the cable news marketplace. The real ideologues were MSNBC and CNN, who held to competing...

John Stossel:  Free enterprise does everything better Why? Because if private companies don't do things efficiently, they lose money and die. Unlike government, they cannot compel payment through the power to tax. Notice how every government "solution" involves more of what caused the problem in the first place? And how more money and more bureaucracy are always involved as well? "Oh yeah!"  Sneers the progressive.  "What about public roads?  Huh?  Huh?" Private enterprise does roads better than government In 1995, a private road company added two lanes in the middle of California Highway 91, right where the median strip used...

Click here to find out more! In "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity," I bet my readers $1,000 that they couldn't name one thing that government does better than the private sector. I am yet to pay. Free enterprise does everything better. Why? Because if private companies don't do things efficiently, they lose money and die. Unlike government, they cannot compel payment through the power to tax. Even when a private company operates a public facility under contract to government, it must perform. If it doesn't, it will be "fired" -- its contract won't be renewed. Government is never fired. Contracting...

Click here to find out more! America is one of many countries that forbid openly gay people to serve in the military. Others are: Cuba, China, Egypt, Greece, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Turkey and Venezuela. See a pattern? With a few exceptions, those are not countries where free people want to live. By contrast, Australia, the United Kingdom, Israel, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia and Spain all allow gay people to serve. No country has America's in-between policy: Gays can serve -- as long...

What's Great About America: Free Speech My first Fox News Channel special, titled "What's Great About America", airs this Fourth of July Weekend (Saturday and Sunday) on Fox News at 9pm Eastern Time.What is great about America? For one: We can say just about anything, thanks to the First Amendment. It reads: "Congress shall make no law... abridging freedom of speech."That makes a difference. It lets us say even offensive things.Rosie O'Donnell says things like "Don't fear the terrorists" and "radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America."America tolerates speech like that, but...

June 24, 2010 07:09 PM UTC by John StosselTonight's Show: Self-Defense With Guns (9pm on FBN) It is nearly impossible to get a handgun for self-defense in my hometown of New York City. Here, if you want to keep a handgun in your home, you must pay $340 and fill out a 15- page application about why you want a handgun. It can be rejected for any reason. Want a realistic toy handgun? Banned. Want to carry a handgun on your person? Forget it.Unfortunately, laws like that... kill people. No one knows that better than Suzanna Hupp, whose parents were...

Here is video of John Stossel on Fox and Friends where he said the truth is that the more available guns are, “crime tends to go down because the bad guys start to get worried about who has a gun.” Stossel pointed out that when Great Britain banned guns, “crime went up.” He also said it is true that virtually everyone in the “mainstream media” is anti-gun. He said he knows because he used to be a part of them. Despite all the emphasis in the media that increased gun regulation reduces crime, Stossel said the facts just don’t support...

John Stossel: ‘Thuggish Chicago Shakedown’ Of BP Is ‘Not Democracy’by Frances Martel 7:50 am, June 23rd, 2010 It seems that every time someone in the GOP expresses some radical libertarian idea, the rest of the party scatters as far from the person as possible. And like a brave firefighter to a burning building, John Stossel rushes in to save the embers of his beloved philosophy. He arrived on the O’Reilly Factor tonight with fistfuls of red-hot free market capitalism, calling the $20 billion BP escrow account a “thuggish Chicago shakedown,” by “Vladimir Obama.” While Stossel didn’t defend BP CEO Tony...

I'm confused. When I walk around busy midtown Manhattan, I often smell marijuana. Despite the crowds, some people smoke weed in public. Usually the police leave them alone, and yet other times they act like a military force engaged in urban combat. This February, cops stormed a Columbia, Mo., home, killed the family dog and terrorized a 7-year-old boy -- for what? A tiny quantity of marijuana. Two years ago, in Prince George's County, Md., cops raided Cheye Calvo's home -- all because a box of marijuana was randomly shipped to his wife as part of a smuggling operation. Only...

America's current struggles notwithstanding, life here is pretty good. We have a standard of living that's the envy of most of the world. Why did that happen? Prosperity isn't the norm. Throughout history and throughout the world, poverty has been the norm. Most of the world still lives in dire poverty. Of the 6 billion people on earth, perhaps 1 billion have something close to our standard of living. Why did America prosper when most of the people of the world are still poor? Milton Friedman taught me the answer. More than any other American, Friedman, who won the Nobel...

It's from a few months ago, but still very good.

I used to be a Kennedy-style "liberal." Then I wised up. Now I'm a libertarian. But what does that mean? When I asked people on the street, half had no clue. We know that conservatives want government to conserve traditional values. They say they're for limited government, but they're pro-drug war, pro-immigration restriction and anti-abortion, and they often support "nation-building." And so-called liberals? They tend to be anti-gun and pro-choice on abortion. They favor big, powerful government -- they say -- to make life kinder for people. By contrast, libertarians want government to leave people alone -- in both the...

Anybody watched Stossel. Drew Carey is on trying to save Cleveland. Stossel had on Kunicich, who as boy wonder mayor of Cleveland drove it into bankruptcy, and the head of the planning commission. These 2 demostrate why Cleveland and other cities dominated by Democrats are hopeless cases.

Licensing Madness My show tonight tonight asks, why do so many occupations need a license? Requiring permission from the state to do everything from flower arranging to practicing law paralyzes competition and protects entrenched special interests.Our most outrageous example of licensing madness is the plight of David Price, a man who learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished, especially when messing with lawyers. Price made the mistake of helping Eldon Ray, a fellow Kansan who was fined for practicing architecture without a license. Price didn’t represent Ray in court; he just helped Ray by writing a letter...

Succeeding in business is tough. You have to create a product that people want and then hope that they want it more than they want your competitors’ products. Superior workmanship, innovation, advertising and customer service might accomplish that, but if you want a special advantage, it sure helps to have a few friends in high places. In this week's syndicated column, I write again about Serious Materials, a "green" window manufacturer that got serious attention from Vice President Biden: Biden laid it on pretty thick for Serious Materials: "This is a story of how a new economy predicated on innovation...

The government-school establishment has said the same thing for decades: Education is too important to leave to the competitive market. If we really want to help our kids, we must focus more resources on the government schools. But despite this mantra, the focus is on something other than the kids. When The Washington Post asked George Parker, head of the Washington, D.C., teachers union, about the voucher program there, he said: "Parents are voting with their feet. ... As kids continue leaving the system, we will lose teachers. Our very survival depends on having kids in D.C. schools so we'll...

Video at link Stossel: Michelle Berry runs a day-care business out of her home in Flint, MI. She thought that she owned her own business, but Berry's been told she is now a government employee and union member. It's not voluntary. Suddenly, Berry and 40,000 other Michigan private day-care providers have learned that union dues are being taken out of the child-care subsidies the state sends them. The "union" is a creation of AFSCME, the government workers union, and the United Auto Workers.

Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom. That doesn't just mean that more of us must work for the government. It means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people into a submissive flock. The welfare state kills the creative spirit. F.A. Hayek, an Austrian economist living in Britain, wrote "The Road to Serfdom" in 1944 as a warning that central economic planning would extinguish freedom. The book was a hit. Reader's Digest produced a condensed version that sold 5 million copies. Hayek meant that governments can't plan economies without planning people's lives. After all,...

I am watching Stossel and he was interviewing Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Stossel asked him about his support of the creation of Government Motors. Rep. Ryan made some rambling response that to me sounded almost like he voted no before yes a la John Kerry. Bit disappointed with that answer.

Somehow we as citizens get used to hearing the word "crisis," and, naturally, we feel that something should be done about whatever it is this time that is causing the next in the long line of so-called crises. However, why is the assumption that government should be the solution? Why are other solutions not sought after? Take John Stossel's recent show on obesity (two clips): As one can see, Meme Roth uses all of the standard demagogic arguments for government action. Our kids are our most precious asset and parents are just too stupid to take care of them. Second,...

When you gas up your car, do you think that you're doing something evil? After all, I'm told that burning gasoline helps "murder the Earth," not to mention fills the coffers of terrorists and despots. So we must move away from oil. Al Gore says, "The future of human civilization is at stake." But I need the gas. I need to drive. I need electricity to light my home. What can I do? Is there an alternative? There is, I'm told. "What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don't cause pollution and are abundantly available right here...

Obama: I Will Tax You to Punish Banks   Today President Obama will propose a new tax on the nation’s biggest banks, reports today's Washington Post. How will the tax work? Firms would pay a "Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee" at an annual rate of $1,500 for every $1 million borrowed to finance lending and other activities.In other words, the Obama Administration is going to punish those greedy banks by making it more expensive for you to borrow money. This is wrong on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with a point made by Jamie...

Here's a Label: "Stupid"   Labels change over time to ensure no delicate sensitivities are bruised. That's what happened with the word "poor," as in "poor children." Poor children became "disadvantaged." They didn’t get any extra money for that, unfortunately. Now, they're "at-risk." That's not enough, say some members of the language police.People like Washington State Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin, who says "We really put too many negatives on our kids... We need to come up with positive terms." Her solution? Call the kids "at hope."Since Franklin is a politician, she wants to impose her whims on everyone...

omorrow, my Fox Business Network show about Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged" will finally air. That should stop the emails like this one from Karen Cooper: "Oh for the love of god! 'Atlas Shrugged' explains about 99 percent of what's wrong in all of the arenas of topics: health care, education, climate change, unions, the economy, etc. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE cover 'Atlas.'" Cooper makes a good point. Even though Rand published "Atlas" in 1957, her descriptions of intrusive and bloated government read like today's news. The "Preservation of Livelihood Law" and "Equalization of Opportunity Law" could be Nancy Pelosi's or...

Stossel's discussion of Atlas Shrugged, on Fox Business 1/07/10

There are several information programs out there produced by John Stoical, that address our health care situation.  They are very good because they cover a number of important issues, help the viewer to understand basic principles, and provide sound ideas how to improve the presnt system, which the present health care plan on Capital Hill does not do. The first presentation I'm going to bring to your attention is a six part ABC 20/20 program that appears on YouTube.  The second will be a sixteen clip presentation on Stossel's FoxNews Business site. The ABC 20/20 presentation is entitled, "John Stossel...

Here is video of Bill O'Reilly talking with John Stossel about a controversial "race, culture, class, and gender task force" at a university in Minnesota that will require students to accept theories like "white privilege and institutional racism." (Video)

John Stossel's new show, aptly titled, "Stossel," will debut tomorrow, December 10, on the FOX Business Network (not FOX News). It premieres at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Thursday, and will repeat Fridays at 7:00 p.m., Eastern. Ironically, the Friday repeat runs up against his old ABC show, 20/20...

John Stossel has broadcast the following email: It’s finally here – my new Fox Business show! Fox fittingly has titled it, Stossel. It premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. It will repeat Fridays at 10 p.m., where I’ll be up against my old program, 20/20. FBN has given me an opportunity to do 44 TV shows on what I am passionate about: economic liberty. For my first shows, at least, I will experiment with a studio audience. I’m inviting both friends, and people who will scream at me and tell me free markets are evil. If you are in the New...

John Stossel had his first show on FOX tonight. He decided to go with Global Warming as a topic for the whole show. I really enjoyed it. If you're interested in checking out John Stossel's new FOX show: Click Here For The Videos. Look below the first video for parts 2-7.

President Obama goes to Copenhagen next week, and he is expected to promise to cut carbon emissions 83 percent by 2050. And John Stossel will have plenty to say about it Thursday night, when his new show, "Stossel," premieres on Fox Business at 8 p.m. EST. Expect Stossel to weigh in on the utter arrogance of the effort. A promise of 83 percent? Not 80 percent? Not 85 percent? And why do the world's leaders wnat to spend trillions on a theortical problem with millions dying from malnutrition, poor hygiene, and malaria.